The Designers Accord

Thursday the 10th of March 2011 saw the first ever Designers Accord UK Town Hall meeting held at the University of Brighton. The student run event was created in order to raise awareness of the Designers Accord, generate conversation and build stronger links in the community. Students and staff from the University of Brighton, a large range of practicing designers, and academics from other parts of the UK attended the event.

The question that brought everyone together for the evening was “What actions can we take to design a more sustainable future?”

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The Chicago Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting took place on March 10, 2011, in the beautiful ballroom of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Organized by SAIC AIGA and sponsored by SAIC’s Student Association, there were four presentations by local designers and architects: product designers Sharon and Ted Burdett from Strand Designs, designer Antonio Garcia from GravityTank, Architect Michael Newman from SHED Studios, and Erin Huizenga, founder of EPIC. All of the speakers focused on the theme of designing for social change. It was fascinating to see this trend of recurring topics including sustainability, the value of design, and pro bono work. Following the presentations was a Q&A session lead by the AIGA student leader, Vrinda Bhageria, and finally, there were the round table discussions that enabled the public to engage in a more informal discussion with the speakers.

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The theme of the Designers Accord Town Hall on October 28th, 2010 – organized by interactive design studio More Than Us and design entrepreneurship non-profit NYDesigns and held in the gallery space of the former in Long Island City, NY – centered around “Designs + Sustainability + Profitability.” The speakers were given a pretty wide berth on what they could address between those lines. Moderator Neil Chambers, a green building expert, Treehugger blogger and author of the forthcoming book Urban Green: The Future of Architecture, captured it best in stating that “Green issues, design issues, money issues and their intersections are going to give us a good idea of what business will look like in the future.”

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On October 12, the University of the Arts Industrial Design program and Bresslergroup partnered to host the second Philadelphia-based Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting. This also took place during DesignPhiladelphia, the largest design event of its kind in the nation. Tying in to the DesignPhiladelphia schedule broadened the attendee base, exposing the Designers Accord to a larger audience and widening the discussion through new voices.

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• See where “really good design questions lead to really good business questions.”
• Understand how “design thinking isn’t enough.”
• Explore where “great design has gone bad.”

Read the recap of the dialogue, insight, and disagreement from Seattle’s first Designers Accord Town Hall meeting on Core77.

There’s no shortage of good ideas about sustainability and sustainable design, but many of these ideas never come to life. That challenge was one of the inspirations behind the creation of the GreenerMind Summit, an unconference for designers, activists, and other sustainability professionals in the Bay Area. The GreenerMind Summit’s motto: just f*cking do it. We have good ideas, and now it’s time to act.

Read the entire event recap on Core77