Impact! Design for Social Change is a six-week summer intensive co-chaired by Steven Heller and Mark Randall. The program at the School of Visual Arts in New York will introduce professionals, educators and students to the growing field of design for social advocacy.
To learn more visit: http://www.sva.edu/impact/
Amidst the new outfits swishing down runways at this year’s London Fashion Week was a different kind of fashion launch: The British non-profit named Forum for the Future released its sustainability trend report for the industry. But the report, named Fashion Futures 2025, is no endless stack of statistics, like so many other trend reports that seem like they were written to make your eyes glaze over. This innovative toolkit includes a range of free materials, from a workshop guide to entertaining animation, that its creators hope will help the report’s message reach a wider audience.
On Wednesday, February 24th 2010, the first ever German Town Hall Meeting was held in Berlin with over 120 guests. It was an evening intended to introduce the Designers Accord, share projects, and discuss initiatives. The International Design Center Berlin was an ideal venue for the Town Hall. It’s a non-profit organization that was founded more than 40 years ago, in the back then divided city. It has long since emphasized topical issues and social questions in design. The lectures and presentations were as diverse and broad as the evening’s key-topic, sustainability. The different approaches to sustainability introduced in the open-mic-session lead to further discussion, exchange and networking with a glass of wine and a pretzel. It was midnight when the last guests left, having not only heard bigger ideas on sustainability, but wiser on what is actually going on in Berlin on a smaller scale.
Organic and natural foods have exploded into our supermarkets at an astonishing rate: There has been an estimated 20% growth in volume each year for the last six years. That’s a good problem to have if you’re a consumer who wants to have a range of healthy options to feed your family, but for a marketer who has to help educate consumers about those options and make their brand stand out, it can be a natural disaster. Marty McDonald, creative director of Seattle-based agency egg, was charged with helping the 20-year-old cereal brand Nature’s Path break through a crowded grocery aisle filled with similar-sounding products and reach an audience hungry for sustainable breakfast foods.
In 2005 a new company named KOR Water founded by Eric Barnes and Paul Shustak handed their dream down to Sawhney’s team: It was an idea called “Water ReDesigned,” and their hope was that they could get people to stop using plastic water bottles by changing the way people drank water. After an analysis of the reusable water bottle market at the time, RKS believed the number of products hitting shelves was about to come to a head. “We predicted there would be a commodification of water bottles,” says Sawhney. “And there has been.” As the market flooded with bottles, they realized that no one was positioning their vessels of water as anything but utilitarian. They saw a competitive opportunity where they could position the act of eschewing disposable bottles as almost…virtuous.
I promised that I would never hold a Designers Accord conference (because of the sheer numbers of design conferences, but especially because of the ever-promiscuous green conferences). However, it has become obvious that a significant part of the discussion about incorporating sustainability as a critical lens in design is missing. We spend so much time reworking our professional practice (or at least the rhetoric around it), but another major opportunity lies in shaping the value systems of the next generation of designers. What if the leading thinkers in design education came together to craft a new proposal for the future of the design?
Check out the Designers Accord wrap-up of the events and accomplishments of 2009. Special thanks to our media partners: Core77, Fast Company, and GOOD, and to our strategic partners: Design Ignites Change and The Biomimicry Institute.
We also extend great thanks to our generous 2009 grantmaker: The Summit Foundation. Much appreciation sent also to our design education Summit sponsors: Autodesk, Adobe, Sustainable Minds, and KODA.
An economic downturn can be a boon for volunteerism. Not only are people more sympathetic to the needs of their fellow citizens, but thanks to a lightened workload–or, ahem, no work at all–people also might actually have the time to give. Acknowledging the fact that many designers might be using a slow year to build more meaningful connections with their own communities, and spurred by several service initiatives from local and federal government, a group of New York-based designers formed DesigNYC, a new way for New York designers to connect their creative skills with non-profits.
“I have gone from feeling like I am playing in the band on the Titanic to more desperately trying to stop the captain claiming the benefits of a melted polar iceberg.” (Martin Willers, PEOPLE PEOPLE)
Hear what’s going on in Stockholm around design and sustainability. Core77 posted the summary of the lively session from the Designers Accord first Town Hall outside the United States.
The Designers Accord Global Summit on Sustainability & Education held October 23rd & 24th in San Francisco, marked an important step forward for the sustainable design movement. For two days a high-powered group of about 100 designers, educators, writers, business strategists, technologists, and futurists were assembled by the leadership of the Designers Accord to “tackle the critical issue of sustainability, consider how best to prepare our educational community to make real change, and imagine what’s next in design education.”
The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.
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Last updated: January 27, 2010
