Eric Benson

When faced with these environmental issues, it is important not to wait for others to act, but instead to lead the sustainable design revolution. As designers are both makers and consumers, our power to incite change is compelling, but what does it mean for graphic design to be sustainable? The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines sustainability as ‘allowing for current economic needs to be met while preserving biodiversities and ecosystems to maintain the same quality of life for future generations.’ However to define sustainability in relation to the graphic designer one must examine the tools and resources we use on a daily basis. The main material we use is paper. Paper in modern times is usually made from wood pulp. The wood pulp that makes up the paper is taken from trees, which requires a great amount of energy and water to produce. After the paper is manufactured we use it for printing, which also requires water, energy and, of course, ink (which is made from petroleum products requiring energy and water to refine and manufacture.) It is pretty clear that the act of designing an effective sales brochure has a profound impact on our planet.

Design research historically has looked to locate new knowledge to help advance processes, methods, and tools that usually are applied by practitioners or academics exclusively within the design field or to improve collaborations. The work at Fresh Press, an interdisciplinary agricultural fiber research lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is helping to reframe what a designer can produce as academic research. The research output generated at Fresh Press takes the forms of sustainable paper, building materials, recipes or formulas for manufacture, and data (disseminated in scientific articles) about the characteristics of the materials that can be further explored by connected disciplines. The creation of the sustainable materials is guided through research partnerships at Illinois with the Mechanical Science Engineering Department, the Preservation & Conservation Lab at the Library, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, and the Architecture Department to help test and explore the properties of the fibers and their applications. These collaborations have created not only interesting best practices to introduce the scientific method into design but innovations in sustainable paper in general.

"As the young graphic and industrial designers we teach graduate into an uncertain future, they must be prepared to address and help solve emerging resource and societal issues. In this course, the design student explored current and future issues facing their profession. EDGE (Ethics of the Designer in a Global Economy) is a class taught by the research-based faculty team (Eric Benson and John Jennings) that aims to help shape students into “citizens for the 21st century” through proactive, instead of reactive projects. All projects assigned in this class lived outside of the classroom to help inspire and create awareness of the issues in the local and design communities. The students work for the semester is documented online and will soon be in a printed literary journal designed by the students. Whether by an architect, industrial/fashion or graphic designer, the objects and systems that play a key role in shaping our everyday lives have been intentionally created to support a cause or to be sold in the marketplace. With that in mind the designers’ power to enact a sustainable and equitable change is profound."

Inspiration is everywhere when you stop to not just smell but watch the roses. Mother Nature’s interwoven relationships between all life can serve as a powerful model for graphic designers to create sustainable print and digital work. Design to Renourish is a book for the graphic design professional that helps to integrate sustainability into their workflow through a design process called systems thinking. This process asks the graphic designer to approach a design problem by being more informed and aware of and influenced by the impacts that material and vendor choices have on one another, the planet, and consequently on us.

This article will detail the methodological and pedagogical components of an emerging design movement the authors call Eco-Modernism. This method of design thinking combines the most successful aspects of the Outlaw Designers (Jay Baldwin, Buckminster Fuller and Stewart ...

Sustainability as a concept has begun to be more fully integrated into the American undergraduate design curricula. Our design students are more aware than previous generations of the increasing need for more thoughtful and responsible use of materials and resources, however it seems that apathy and politics prevent full acceptance of sustainable models of creation. Moreover, our educators must quickly become more skillful in environmentally and socially responsible design methodologies to create a completely new curriculum focused on developing a sustainable profession and world that connects with the students of the current generation. Chapman (2005) discusses how one may feel when disposing of a product, as if it is a failed relationship. The user-product affinity can provide the designer with an insight and awareness of authentic needs that can lead to more impactful, responsible and ultimately more sustainable user-product relationships. This paper critiques and further explores how the movement of Ecomodernism can offer a groundbreaking set of guidelines to teach more responsible design at the university level. Ecomodernism includes key pedagogical themes including: collaboration, outside, community, research, communicate, grounded and creative. These concepts are present in emerging sustainable product design curriculum that tend to focus on a greater connection to materials and processes. However Ecomodernism goes further by mandating greater collaboration between disciplines that aim to create outcomes that are not definitively defined at the beginning of the design process. What is missing from Ecomodernism and current design curricula is the need to educate our students to also develop empathic and emotional connections to the designed artifact on top of using sustainable materials and processes. Effective design needs to satisfy needs that are functional (utilitarian) and supra-functional (less tangible) to ensure product outcomes fully respond to the users needs. Equally, manufacturing products in a sustainable material goes only so far in ensuring more sustainable products. An emotional bond to the product is needed. Industry has also become increasingly aware of more environmentally responsible manufacturing processes and invested significant time and capital to improve the efficiencies of their processes. Those companies making significant strides to minimize their impact on our ecosystems are rightly more respected by their current customers (and hopefully future ones as well). However after purchasing a product, the consumer is faced with value-based questions – "How long should I keep the product?" "Is it worth keeping even if it isn't in 'style'"? These questions are important to dissect and discuss. Royte (2005) described our current design process as “(w)e throw things away to make things that we throw away.” What if we kept more of our objects because they evoke our emotions, help create our life stories and capture our important intimate memories? This paper will explain how and why the Ecomoderism model of teaching sustainable design needs to include a stronger connection to our full range of human emotions and highlight important designers who are employing this criterion in professional practice.

ABSTRACT This article explores the question of “how do we teach sustainability to communication designers?” through examining the combined research of the two authors that focuses on connecting issues of sustainability to the values of design students. The article further cites the work of other undergraduate educators who have found success in connecting the concept to that of the students' values, supporting the work of the authors. It is our hypothesis that in order to most effectively introduce sustainability into a curriculum, we must first recognize that it is a political term, concerning the public affairs of our society. It is therefore important to determine the students' values as designers/individuals in order to demonstrate how sustainable issues and politics are intertwined with all of our ethics and specifically with students' professional ambitions. This strategy, combined with principles and methods of co-designing, can help eliminate apathy and pushback within the class, and help empower the desire to integrate sustainable methodologies into students' own working processes.

This Article provides an initial overview of the professional graphic designers’ negative environmental
impact and why their method of design for planned obsolescence must change. It argues thereafter
that the American university graphic design curriculum should evolve to include an initial discussion of
sustainability through a required studio design course on the topic. To aid in the development of a
sustainable design curriculum, the Article provides three case study courses taught by three American
university professors. These provide best practices for other university educators to emulate in
teaching the topic of sustainable design in their classrooms. The discussion of teaching sustainability
in graphic design is just beginning and the required course proposed should serve as a catalyst to
completely change how graphic design is taught from early foundational courses to graduation.

What will designers make? How will technology change the industry? How does design continue to grow their credibility and offerings? How does design create in a future clouded by possible catastrophic climate change? All of these concerns and more challenge the design educator and studio in contemporary times. As paper is the fourth largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (Kinsells, Gleason, Mills, Rycroft, Ford, Sheehan & Martin, 2007) in the United States and is also one of the largest consumers of industrial water amongst all OECD countries (Mortenson, Mountford, Braathen, Cheong, Christensen, Geyer-Allely, Jones, Keijzers, Schenk, Turnheim, Viallfuerte-Zavala & Ritter, 2010), designers are forced to ask themselves “is what we make, worth what we destroy?” (Fry, 2011). Combined with record unemployment and the catastrophic disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which leaked 4.4 million barrels of oil (Crone & Maya, 2002:634) into a fragile ecosystem, the past year (2010) also proved to be the warmest on record according to both NOAA (NOAA, 2010) and NASA (Hansen, Ruedy, Sata and Lo, 2010) reports beating out the record highs of 1998. In connection with this shift in the climate, rivers and streams throughout the United States have warmed significantly in the past decade
(Kaushal, Likens, Jaworski, Pace, Sides, Seekell, Belt, Secor, & Wingate, 2010) adding to the concern that climate change is having a destructive impact on our ecosystems and current way of life. These findings compound the already convincing and frightening research compiled by global climate researchers that global warming is significantly impacted by human activities. In fact, a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that 97-98% of climate researchers agree (Anderegg, Prall, Harold & Schneider, 2010) that the way we transport our goods, create and manufacture our products and power our homes and buildings is the major cause of our shifting climate. 
This article details the promising outcomes from the 2011 EDGE (Ethics of a Designer in a Global Economy) design course taught by the author at the University of Illinois. EDGE explored the concerns of creating a sustainable studio and profession through three connected projects that allowed the design students to explore co-design, design strategy, design thinking, and social entrepreneurship. These key design methodologies combined with a half-dozen design studio owners, and successful social entrepreneurs provided for lively conversation and a deeper understanding of the economic, social, cultural, and environmental considerations necessary to launch and keep a studio sustainable in an uncertain future.

As the young graphic and industrial designers we teach graduate into an uncertain future, they must be prepared to address and help solve emerging resource and societal issues. In this course, the design student explored current and future issues facing their profession. EDGE (Ethics of the Designer in a Global Economy) is a class taught by the research-based faculty team (Eric Benson and John Jennings) that aims to help shape students into “citizens for the 21st century” through proactive, instead of reactive projects. All projects assigned in this class lived outside of the classroom to help inspire and create awareness of the issues in the local and design communities. The students work for the semester is documented online and will soon be in a printed literary journal designed by the students. Whether by an architect, industrial/fashion or graphic designer, the objects and systems that play a key role in shaping our everyday lives have been intentionally created to support a cause or to be sold in the marketplace. With that in mind the designers’ power to enact a sustainable and equitable change is profound.

While the design industry is a complex and multidimensional landscape, the current design curriculum lives in stark contrast: linear and compartmentalized. University product design curricula are mainly insular, where studio art is separated from liberal arts courses, despite their close physical and theoretical proximities. While this separation allows students to effectively attain proficiency in skill-sets relevant to the product design discipline, students do not learn how liberal arts education can complement their design knowledge.

These silos of practice stand in opposition to the type of creative processes and collaborations necessary to help solve the issues that humanity faces today. Wicked problems  like climate change must be discussed in design education. The solutions to these problems mandate collaboration with other disciplines such as anthropology and/or engineering.

This article is a proposal for new research examining how a liberal arts “integrated” design education may enhance the design students’ systems thinking abilities. A more effective design curriculum will need to employ a systems thinking methodology, so a project can be viewed as a part of an entire system of connected concerns. This mode of thinking would not render the designer a generalist, but instead one that is always seeking to collaborate and explore outcomes outside of their typical artifacts. This article will also examine how the current product design education is structured and, despite the differences in the teaching and learning environment of liberal arts courses are different from studio art courses, they could and should work together effectively.

Keywords: Integrated education system, interdisciplinary, liberal arts, systems thinking

The communication vehicle that most of America truthfully refer to as “junk mail” encourages every year (in the USA) the felling of 100 million trees to produce printed communication asking you to apply for a new credit card or shop at a big box store. 89 percent of American consumers prefer they didn’t receive the four million tons of correspondence they receive collectively every year. The American public view direct mail as such a nuisance that 44 percent choose to not even open letters of solicitation and instead toss it in the nearest recycling/trash bin.

When faced with these environmental issues, it is important not to wait for others to act, but instead to lead the sustainable design revolution. As designers are both makers and consumers, our power to incite change is compelling, but what does it mean for graphic design to be sustainable? The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines sustainability as ‘allowing for current economic needs to be met while preserving biodiversities and ecosystems to maintain the same quality of life for future generations.’

However to define sustainability in relation to the graphic designer one must examine the tools and resources we use on a daily basis. The main material we use is paper. Paper in modern times is usually made from wood pulp. The wood pulp that makes up the paper is taken from trees, which requires a great amount of energy and water to produce. After the paper is manufactured we use it for printing, which also requires water, energy and, of course, ink (which is made from petroleum products requiring energy and water to refine and manufacture.) It is pretty clear that the act of designing an effective sales brochure has a profound impact on our planet.

This 90-minute workshop will give you the basics to use systems thinking in your studio or classroom through a four-step design process that includes virtual hands-on exercises to get you started today.

Wait, what is systems thinking? Systems thinking in design should result in a usable and beautiful object or service that improves not only our quality of life but nature as well (reparations for nature). Systems thinking is the way forward for designers to continue their practice and renourish what humanity has taken away from (and damaged) the planet, and, in turn, drawdown our global carbon emissions.

Design research historically has looked to locate new knowledge to help advance processes, methods, and tools that usually are applied by practitioners or academics exclusively within the design field or to improve collaborations. The work at Fresh Press, an interdisciplinary agricultural fiber research lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is helping to reframe what a designer can produce as academic research. The research output generated at Fresh Press takes the forms of sustainable paper, building materials, recipes or formulas for manufacture, and data (disseminated in scientific articles) about the characteristics of the materials that can be further explored by connected disciplines. The creation of the sustainable materials is guided through research partnerships at Illinois with the Mechanical Science Engineering Department, the Preservation & Conservation Lab at the Library, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, and the Architecture Department to help test and explore the properties of the fibers and their applications. These collaborations have created not only interesting best practices to introduce the scientific method into design but innovations in sustainable paper in general.

The effort to establish ethics for the graphic design field is an important quest. The conversations on “how-to” should not only be held amongst our field of practitioners, but also in the graphic design classroom. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the faculty not only agree but go further to require that our students read, discuss, and make around the topic of ethics. This is accomplished through a core class entitled Ethics of a Designer in a Global Economy (EDGE).

This presentation will focus on five pedagogical components important to the development of the course: the curricular process on how the Illinois faculty developed EDGE, the reasoning behind the final structure of the course (personal, community, global), the vetting of readings on ethics, the rationale for student projects to be interdisciplinary and live outside of the classroom, and a reflection on the course outcomes.

The sharing of this pedagogical research is aimed to assist in the advancement of the discussion of ethics and more conscious practice of design starting through education in the college classroom. The EDGE course framework and outcomes hope to encourage and inspire other colleges and universities to also require ethics in their graphic design curriculum.

This panel discussion will focus on the development and application of various creative models that integrate hand papermaking with a community-based practice. Presentations will chronicle the reflexive properties of engagement, leveraging material and process as creative capital, and transformative relationships of material practice and community resilience. Topics for discussion will focus on place-based creative communities, cultural ecosystems, storytelling as critical engagement, and community vitality through hand papermaking.

While the design industry is a complex and multidimensional landscape, the current design curriculum lives in stark contrast: linear and compartmentalized. University product design curricula are mainly insular concerns. This mode of thinking would not render the designer a generalist, but instead one that is always seeking to collaborate and explore outcomes outside of their typical artifacts. This article will also examine how the current product design education is structured and, despite the differences in the teaching and learning environment of liberal arts courses are different from studio art courses, they could and should work together effectively., where studio art is separated from liberal arts courses, despite their close physical and theoretical proximities. While this separation allows students to effectively attain proficiency in skill-sets relevant to the product design discipline, students do not learn how liberal arts education can complement their design knowledge.

These silos of practice stand in opposition to the type of creative processes and collaborations necessary to help solve the issues that humanity faces today. Wicked problems  like climate change must be discussed in design education. The solutions to these problems mandate collaboration with other disciplines such as anthropology and/or engineering.

This article is a proposal for new research examining how a liberal arts “integrated” design education may enhance the design students’ systems thinking abilities. A more effective design curriculum will need to employ a systems thinking methodology, so a project can be viewed as a part of an entire system of connected

"
When director George Romero introduced the modern conception of the zombie in1968, he created an enduring metaphor depicting the societal impact of rampant conspicuous consumption. His allegory for the consumer is a mindless empty shellconnected to its fellow man only by its incessant need to be satiated by living braintissue. The zombie ingeniously represents the demise of free thought and criticalanalysis in society. Romero shows the horrors of humanity as well as the isolation andbanality of our existence in a corporate-driven world. How does the designer relate tothe zombie? We design the pretty packages to hold the brains. We are DeZombies.Communication Design in the university curriculum is taught within a closed system, which stands in opposition to the very nature of the designer’s purpose. Our current pedagogical model limits intellectual growth by discriminating against socio-economicaccess, perpetuating culturally-biased aesthetics, doggedly enforcing prescribedoutcomes, and defining a career path that creates objects and ideas that help improvethe common “good” only through exorbitant consumerism without asking if whetherthe end product is in the best interest of humanity.This article will argue that Communication Design curricula must evolve to support amore flexible system in which problem solving moves beyond pre-defined deliverablesto one that attempts to solve wicked problems. This new system must allow for diversecultural influences and open access to more socio-economic classes. Discussions about the ethics of working with particular clients and the impact of the final product on ourenvironment should be mandatory. The curriculum should also encourage opendialogues about who designers should serve beyond the corporate oligarchy and howthe design practice can support an inclusive manifestation of design as a social practice. We have to re-design design or wait for that crushing blow to the head."

Nothing we make is truly sustainable, but there are techniques and tools that allow designers to make better decisions and reduce the negative impact of the objects we make. Re-nourish is an online free resource that gives designers access to these tools so they can be more informed in their decision-making processes beyond pixels and paper to allow them to nourish people, planet and profit through design.

EDGE is a course offered at the University of Illinois where students explore the idea of social entrepreneurship, ethics and sustainability. The Spring 2011 course asked the students to “Design a sustainable design studio”. Together with professional and academic guests we answered these questions: What do we make? How do we communicate our offerings? What disciplines do we need to work with more and why? What skills must these designer have? How will it be organized?

Sustainability as a concept has begun to be more fully integrated into the American undergraduate design curricula. The pedagogies currently utilized in the design classroom focus on the more responsible use of our natural resources and emphasize the minimization of materials in the design of an object. They spotlight on the distinct understanding of metrics and life cycles as rightful key components to the education of a sustainable designer in the 21st century.

This paper critiques these current pedagogies and further explores how the movement of Eco-Modernism [1] can offer a groundbreaking set of guidelines to teach more responsible design at the university level. Eco-Modernism also highlights manufacturing and materials but also includes the themes of: collaboration, outside, community, research, communicate, grounding, and creativity. Eco-Modernism goes further than existing teaching methods by mandating greater collaboration between disciplines that aim to create outcomes that are not definitively defined at the beginning of the design process. What is missing from Eco-Modernism and current design curricula, however, is the need to educate our students to also develop empathic and emotional connections to the designed artifact on top of using sustainable materials and processes. Effective design needs to satisfy needs that are functional (utilitarian) and supra-functional (less tangible) to ensure product outcomes fully respond to the users needs. This paper will argue that simply by manufacturing products in a sustainable material goes only so far in ensuring more sustainable products. An emotional bond to the product is needed.

The imagery used to sell food from the supermarket to the farmer’s market vary but share an important similarity: they were designed. Whether it is a hastily scribbled chalkboard announcing the prices of local arugula or a plastic package of bacon displaying an illustration of a nostalgic red barn surrounded by corn, the visual language of our food is consistently affecting our lifestyle, politics and eating habits.  This paper will focus on a design course from the University of Illinois planned around the theme of “food: fuel for the designer” which involved members of the local community and experts on food justice and farming from campus. The collaborative projects tasked the students to visually map the carbon footprint of the industrialized foods they eat, create a new visual aesthetic to promote locally grown organic foods, and to create an online resource to network community gardeners.

Is it ethical for the graphic design educator to not introduce the topic of sustainability  into the undergraduate design curriculum?

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The answer to this question is a resounding “no.” Today’s undergraduate graphic design student will soon be facing a host of troublesome environmental issues that will affect their profession and daily lives. The expected 2.6 billion rise in global population  will eventually strain our natural resources as more countries rise in economic prowess partly from jobs shipped overseas by U.S. corporations. As population expands so does the need for clean water, fresh air, safe food, more jobs, efficient housing, dependable transportation, increased GDP (partly from sales derived from advertising/communications) and many other daily and economic necessities. These demands could expand the destruction of our forests and increase the pollution of our air and water to meet the need for a growth in agriculture, home building, print communications/advertising (paper use has already tripled since 1961 ) and compound energy issues for elevated production of products to satisfy shareholders.  Graphic designers through their unfortunate ignorance of the impacts of paper (their main vehicle to communicate their messaging) readily contribute money to the third largest polluting industry in the world : the paper mills. Understanding the far-reaching environmental and social impacts is needed in our design education curriculum to find ways to help change our current way of making.

Our current model of making is: we throw things away to make things to throw away. Designers essentially make beautiful trash. This, in the end, however is successful capitalism. The more packaging in the landfill means the more products a company sold and consequently higher profits for that quarter. Like it or not, all of our work eventually ends up incinerated into the atmosphere or living in the landfill. Puente Hills Landfill in Whittier, CA is the largest human-made object on Earth. This arguably could be the everlasting monument to capitalism and loosely, the graphic designer. As we teach our students to research, concept, choose the right typeface, and kern that specified type we are attempting to help them avoid “bad design”. However ignoring impacts of materials and processes, designing for obsolescence, and polluting the planet truly is bad design.

Good design therefore is the opposite of this model: sustainable (environmentally responsible) design. William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s “Cradle to Cradle” model  best represents the new method, where waste equals food. Designers should follow nature’s model, where their designed objects either are returned to the Earth to nurture (biodegrade) the soil or back to industry to be infinitely recycled and reused. It is unethical for our students not to be introduced to this concept as through its principles can lead the charge to really improving our quality of life through design.


Teaching sustainability in design is not a fad; however, it will be a trend and eventually completely change the way we design the objects in our world. Everything in our daily lives has been designed, so our impact can be profound. Our dual professions of educator/researcher and maker are powerful ones. If we educate our students to understand the impacts of their work and strength of their process, we’ll be doing the whole world a huge favor

Modernism + Minimalism + Arts & Crafts = Sustainablism 

Graphic design educators should explore the reasons why the discipline creates the traditional ephemera that it has for decades as overpopulation, pollution and climate change force our field into a philosophical crossroads. Do the benefits of a slick print campaign that raises revenues and encourages economic growth outweigh its negative impacts on the environment through air, water and land pollution?  Can we balance out the impact? The investigation of this question must begin in the university design classroom and embrace the existing understood ideas of Modernism (experimentation, re-examination of the environmental success/failure of traditional graphic design outcomes, and discussion of how the profession should fit in with consumerism), Minimalism (remove unnecessary elements to limit waste) and the Arts & Crafts Movement (the use of honest, appropriate materials and design to be affordable and equitable for all) to gain traction and consequently gain momentum. As sustainability is a burgeoning area within the discipline, there is no necessary recipe for success, but instead a universal declaration to embrace the tenants of the concept (environment, economy & equity) and experiment in the classroom.

Despite this lack of documented case studies, there are emerging themes in sustainable graphic design education that will be of great benefit to the educator:

• (Collaboration.) Collaborative projects are emphasized in the classroom, as one discipline will not solve the problem alone. Instead including other disciplines and encouraging teamwork is imperative. 
• (Interdisciplinary.) Interdisciplinary work amongst design disciplines and across business, engineering, natural & social sciences and humanities should be investigated.
• (Work outside our comfort zone.) Work that lives outside of the classroom is beneficial as it involves real experiences over virtual engagement in the classroom. The ideal situation would involve augmenting course discussion with real-world experiences.
• (Community.) Personal and subjective responses to problems are encouraged as they involve building and strengthening communities inside and introducing new areas outside the classroom.
• (Research.) The further emphasis of research on intensive projects that gather data on how information can be more sustainably communicated and examine the systems in which this information exists to improve the way we function within.
• (Communicate.) Introduce sustainable projects that build on advocacy, education and persuasion
• (Grounded.) Push the pragmatic as it is still about building the basic design skills and emphasizing the importance of process
• (Creative.) As Einstein said “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Develop projects with less prescribed outcomes. Provide a looser framework where innovative ideas, new ways of thinking, and the challenging of assumptions can thrive.


This exploration in the classroom is imperative as it is foolish to think that the booming consumerism we have experienced over the past sixty years will continue at the same rate without the help of reusing and recycling existing materials. Global populations continue to grow (projected at another 2.6 billion people by 2050) which will further drain our natural resources and put a strain on our economies. Sigmund Freud argued the unconscious mind is full of primal impulses that affect conscious behavior and in a large part can drive destructive consumption habits based on filling irrational needs (fitting in, the libido and Thanatos).  Will consumers be able to combat their unconscious desires (that are capitalized on by advertisers) and be able to recognize sustainable products as valuable and desirable and cool as opposed to “trash” or “niche”? A huge part of moving towards sustainability will also come from confronting our consumption and living patterns. We must confront ourselves. Are we destined to doom ourselves, as Freud and his daughter Anna Freud believed? Or can we rectify our needs and desires to live more effectively in a community? Can we rectify Capitalism, which seems to amplify our desires of greed, and inadequacy to live in an equitably designed future where we can integrate the “machine in the garden”?

This interdisciplinary panel will bring together six national leaders in industry and education for a discussion of “Sustaining Sustainable Design”. With the 2006 release of Al Gore’s film Inconvenient Truth and William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, the notion of sustainable design has finally gotten it’s time in the limelight. Despite the attention, the movement still lacks universal acceptance, a scientific metric to gauge success, and most importantly a functioning system of reclamation and capture for it to work as conceived. Ray Anderson (Interface, Inc.) said in 2004, "No one should be claiming sustainable products. There is no such thing yet in terms of zero footprint. What you can do is demonstrate reduced footprint." Our products produced today can reduce energy in manufacturing and consequently limit our carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, contain no carcinogenic chemicals, and are designed to be dissembled and recycled (the Haworth ZODY chair for example), but none are truly sustainable by definition. Theses products are not yet manufactured in a socially equitable way. Many are produced overseas by underpaid workers and then shipped back to the US, burning fossil fuels that were saved initially in it’s efficient manufacturing design. They are also quite expensive in comparison to their unsustainable counterparts.

In order to sustain sustainable design, we must first determine a universally accepted definition of what it is currently and also what will it need to be in the future? We must then ask ourselves, what can professional designers do to help build and sustain this current sustainable design momentum? What are our new challenges as leaders in this burgeoning field?  Besides product and graphic designers will the immensity of sustainability force us to be the champions of better systems design? Are we ready to make a collective effort in tackling this problem? And finally, how do we prepare your current and future designers to be ready for future environmental and societal issues? The panel will address these and other important issues including the sustainable design education, assessment strategies and tools, and the need for a sustainable design aesthetic.

What is “good” design? What constitutes an ethical design decision? Aristotle argued that an object is “good” if it fulfills its purpose. This philosophy dictates then, for example, that a well-designed knife is “good” if it cuts effectively. However if the same knife was used in the taking of an innocent life, the concept of a “good” design gets murky. Ethics are based on moral choices and the reasons people give to support their belief systems. Ethics also help us appreciate and evaluate our choices and allow us to be more cognizant of how we can better shape our future. When one looks at how design connects to ethics, it is fairly evident that a direct relationship exists. Every object and system in our daily lives has been intentionally created through a design process. With that in mind the designers’ power to enact a positive or negative ethical or equitable change is profound. This paper (details the results of the fall 2007 EDGE course) argues that the more the design student explores the ethical questions posed previously, the more they will be able to make informed moral design decisions in the professional world. This paper further explains how and why EDGE was structured into two distinct but connected modules. These divisions of study allowed the students to address the course’s principal argument by exploring design’s relationship to cultural and racial stereotypes and also to environmental degradation. Finally, the paper compares the traditional paradigm of design curriculum constructed on the philosophical models of egoism and hedonism (increasing student’s skills to fuel economic/personal success) with a more utilitarian and relativist version of design ethics where good design is conditional and provides “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.”

What is “good” design? What constitutes an ethical design decision? Aristotle argued that an object is “good” if it fulfills its purpose. This philosophy dictates then, for example, that a well-designed knife is “good” if it cuts effectively. However if the same knife was used in the taking of an innocent life, the concept of a “good” design gets murky. Ethics are based on moral choices and the reasons people give to support their belief systems. Ethics also help us appreciate and evaluate our choices and allow us to be more cognizant of how we can better shape our future. When one looks at how design connects to ethics, it is fairly evident that a direct relationship exists. Every object and system in our daily lives has been intentionally created through a design process. With that in mind the designers’ power to enact a positive or negative ethical or equitable change is profound. This paper (details the results of the fall 2007 EDGE course) argues that the more the design student explores the ethical questions posed previously, the more they will be able to make informed moral design decisions in the professional world. This paper further explains how and why EDGE was structured into two distinct but connected modules. These divisions of study allowed the students to address the course’s principal argument by exploring design’s relationship to cultural and racial stereotypes and also to environmental degradation. Finally, the paper compares the traditional paradigm of design curriculum constructed on the philosophical models of egoism and hedonism (increasing student’s skills to fuel economic/personal success) with a more utilitarian and relativist version of design ethics where good design is conditional and provides “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.”

As the young graphic and industrial designers we teach graduate into an uncertain future, they must be prepared
to address and help solve emerging resource and societal issues. In this course, the design student explored current and
future issues facing their profession. EDGE (Ethics of the Designer in a Global Economy) is a class taught by the research-based faculty team (Eric Benson and John Jennings) that aims to help shape students into “citizens for the 21st century” through proactive, instead of reactive projects. All projects assigned in this class lived outside of the classroom to help inspire and create awareness of the issues in the local and design communities. The students work for the semester is documented online and will soon be in a printed literary journal designed by the students. Whether by an architect, industrial/fashion or graphic designer, the objects and systems that play a key role in shaping our everyday lives have been intentionally created to support a cause or to be sold in the marketplace. With that in mind the designers’ power to enact a sustainable and equitable change is profound.

This Article provides an initial overview of the professional graphic designers’ negative environmental impact and why their method of design for planned obsolescence must change. It argues thereafter that the American university graphic design curriculum should evolve to include an initial discussion of sustainability through a required studio design course on the topic. To aid in the development of a sustainable design curriculum, the Article provides three case study courses taught by three American university professors. These provide best practices for other university educators to emulate in teaching the topic of sustainable design in their classrooms. The discussion of teaching sustainability in graphic design is just beginning and the required course proposed should serve as a catalyst to completely change how graphic design is taught from early foundational courses to graduation.

Sustainability is already incorporated into many courses in architecture, business and engineering, but how can it be adopted into graphic design teaching pedagogy? This is the principal question I will address in my paper.
Today’s graphic design students will soon be facing a host of troublesome environmental issues that will affect their profession. The expected three to four billion rise in global population will put a strain on our natural resources. While over-using paper, designers play a role in negative environmental impacts: water and air pollution (the printing industry is the third largest air polluter), deforestation, and filling landfills with more and more packaging waste (30% of our municipal landfills ).
These facts are frightening but do nothing to positively encourage the designer to act effectively. How can the educator make sustainability not seem limiting and instead full of opportunity? Moreover, should the teaching of sustainability be an entire class or major dedicated to the topic or be integrated as larger research-based projects for upper level design students?” What are the practical implications of learning sustainability for the designer heading out into the business world?
I will look at how other disciplines in Industrial Design (the OKALA Curriculum) and Architecture approach the issue. I will further delve into the importance of interdisciplinary sustainable projects for the graphic designer and I will discuss my teaching research (www.re-nourish.com) and show examples of successes and failures in my classroom. These two case studies will be used to define an initial recipe for success in integrating sustainability into the graphic design curriculum.

Author and activist Paul Hawken argues that our natural resources are “the foundation of our economy.” Without water, timber, air and land our economy would cease to function. As graphic designers are realizing the importance of designing with the environment in mind, they do so by minimizing their waste, reducing CO2 emissions through choosing recycled materials, and working with vendors also committed to the same cause. The graphic design supply chain must collectively select the most logical sustainable path to maintain our planet and our craft.

Recent lukewarm acceptance of the green movement by corporate America has led to “greenwashing,” where misleading or false claims of environmental friendliness have confused consumers, and failed to effectively forward the sustainable industry or benefit our increasingly fragile ecosystems. To combat this issue, a list of seven “sins of greenwashing” were created by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing . These guidelines are very broad, however, and they fail to provide concrete steps for the graphic designer to follow. This presentation will unveil the change potential that a set of Sustainable Design Standards can provide to create a comprehensive system of providing green accreditation to print, packaging and digital design projects.

Author and activist Paul Hawken argues that our natural resources are “the foundation of our economy.” Without water, timber, air and land our economy would cease to function. As graphic designers are realizing the importance of designing with the environment in mind, they do so by minimizing their waste, reducing CO2 emissions through choosing recycled materials, and working with vendors also committed to the same cause. The graphic design supply chain must collectively select the most logical sustainable path to maintain our planet and our craft.

Recent lukewarm acceptance of the green movement by corporate America has led to “greenwashing,” where misleading or false claims of environmental friendliness have confused consumers, and failed to effectively forward the sustainable industry or benefit our increasingly fragile ecosystems. To combat this issue, a list of seven “sins of greenwashing” were created by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing . These guidelines are very broad, however, and they fail to provide concrete steps for the graphic designer to follow. This presentation will unveil the change potential that a set of Sustainable Design Standards can provide to create a comprehensive system of providing green accreditation to print, packaging and digital design projects.

This paper explores the similarities between our potential geological epoch, the Ecocene, and the pop culture genre of Hopepunk. It further argues why both are needed in comics today to better explain climate change and to demonstrate a more hopeful future we all can create collectively. The Ecocene is currently embraced by design theorists like Rachel Armstrong and Joanna Boehnert as a path out of the current Anthropocene, the geological epoch where humanity has negatively affected Earth’s ecosystems and climate. Armstrong states “there is no advantage to us to bring the Anthropocene into the future… The mythos of the Anthropocene does not help us… we must re-imagine our world and enable the Ecocene.”



The Ecocene is thus the equitable, just, and safer future humanity hopes for. It can become reality should we decide to design the future we envision using Earth’s natural ecosystems as a guide for a sustainable and regenerative tomorrow. Similarly, Hopepunk, a term coined in 2017 by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland is a rebellion against accepting the negative portrayals of our future in the sub-genre called Grimdark. Grimdark is dystopian, violent, and common in the world of comic titles like “The Walking Dead” and “The Monstress.” It’s bleak vision of our future breeds apathy and despair. Potowatomi Biology Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer argues that “(d)espair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth… Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into a positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual.” In the current climate crisis, inaction is unacceptable.


Like the Ecocene, Hopepunk is the choice to create our future optimistically battling against the cynicism that disaster is our only option. This genre has existed prior to Rowland’s definition in comics like “Firefly”, and “Saga” where, even in an unfair future, the characters continue to fight for what’s right and just in the face of oppression and inequity.

Comics are a great medium to explain and educate about complicated issues to students. The combination of text and image is woven into a sequential set of panels, one can read at their leisure, which is key to make issues not only visible but also more understandable. Educator Gretchen Schwarz wrote that “… the graphic novel offers teachers the opportunity to implement critical media literacy in the classroom – literacy that affirms diversity, gives voice to all, and helps students examine ideas and practices that promulgate inequity.” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists argue further that comics are the most ideal format to explain and educate about climate change as they “can compress time and space, making these invisible connections (of climate change) more clear”. This paper proposes that academics, educators, creatives, and climate activists use the power of comics to tell stories of struggle that embrace and choose optimism to ink and letter a desirable visual of what our collective future could become.

Teaching designers to create for the "Common Good" is a needed effort. As it stands, academia markets niche degrees with a focus on "designing for the common good" with terms like "social impact" and "sustainability" that stand out as oddities separate from the traditional focus on designing corporate solutions.

Faced with the growing social issues and inadequacies of racism, climate change, accessibility, wellness, equity, and education, design curriculums are severely lacking in their focus on the common good. Instead, design education must recognize that their conventions of co-design, sustainable, life-centered, biomimicry, social impact designs need to be incorporated into a methodological approach combining strategies of all to ensure design is a tool that leads to outcomes benefiting all. This method is called Systems Thinking.

We will discuss two programs where creating for the common good is embedded in their curriculum as case studies for higher education to follow.

Over the past two years, the University of Illinois Library Conservation Department has been collaborating with the Fresh Press paper-making studio to develop an environmentally friendly paper that will meet the needs of book conservators, fill a void in the case paper market, and help further the mission at Fresh Press to change the paper supply chain from forest to farm. This presentation, conducted by the members of our team, will describe the process of designing “Prairie Paper,” from sustainability to recipe development, including our challenges and successes.

In library conservation, we experienced a dwindling supply of case papers for limp vellum bindings after Iowa’s Center for the Book stopped production ofPC4 Flax paper. Other alternative sources, such as Cave Pape, were facing funding challenges. To fill this new void in the market, we decided to partner with The Fresh Press studio to design a handmade, sustainable case paper for use on conservation treatments for the library. Our ingredients are sourced by partnering with local farms to receive their unwanted stalks, stems, leaves, and seed pods leftover from harvest, combined with recycled cotton linters from the textile industry. These agricultural waste fibers are transported a few miles to our studio, where we use off-grid solar power and low-emission/high-efficiency instruments to make a paper with a smaller carbon footprint than typical conservation-grade papers.

While the use of alternative fibers for handmade paper is not a new practice, many of these fibers, to our knowledge, have never been rigorously studied for use in archival grade papers. We created a careful research plan and testing protocols to use data to guide our process. After two years of research and testing, we have a successful line of papers that we have named “Prairie Paper.” Prairie Papers are pH neutral, stable after artificial aging studies, and work well in library conservation bindings. We hope to share our process to demonstrate that alternative materials can be safe for use with library collections and encourage others to look to their own local resources for innovative solutions to material challenges

Inspiration is everywhere when you stop to not just smell but watch the roses. Mother Nature’s interwoven relationships between all life can serve as a powerful model for graphic designers to create sustainable print and digital work. Design to Renourish is a book for the graphic design professional that helps to integrate sustainability into their workflow through a design process called systems thinking. This process asks the graphic designer to approach a design problem by being more informed and aware of and influenced by the impacts that material and vendor choices have on one another, the planet, and consequently on us.

The book not only walks the reader through how to design with Mother Nature as a model, but also offers solutions to the real life challenges of working with the client to create sustainable work. Through ten case studies that feature interviews with international design teams who embrace a sustainable systems methodology, the reader will gain valuable insights on how to design to renourish and improve life on Earth.