Summing up sustainable design

I tend to think about sustainable design as a sphere (not simply because that's the shape of our planet!) in the sense that its implementation and effects are felt within a multi-directional loop. It's a construct that goes beyond the physical material (ecological), resonating in economic and social realms as well.

Be it in industrial design, architecture, fashion, engineering or graphic design, sustainable design is viewed as the way forward. It's about what we use and how we use things, and far from having to give up an entire lifestyle, I feel it's more about being as efficient as we can. It's about being more responsible and aware of the repercussions of our actions, without having to live like hermits. It's also about coming to terms with a different way of thinking.

The School of Visual Concepts, Seattle, together with AIGA Seattle, have come up with 101 Things Designers Can Do to Save the Earth, and some of the tips that stood out for me were:

#94. Try not to bleed
Bleeding requires printing on oversized stock with more ink, which all gets trimmed off and discarded as waste. So it's worth considering smaller sizes that fit within standard sheet sizes.

#64. Develop packaging with multiple uses
Instead of designating used packaging for recycling, how can we design it to be reused for another purpose beyond merely containing a product?

#63. Start with the need, not the end result
"What else could you do to accomplish the client’s objectives without necessarily going with paper or energy-based solutions?"

Beyond following guidelines, sustainable design can be truly inspiring in its outcome, and I couldn't resist sharing these!

London-based Curb, provide achingly cool advertising solutions, as their work attests. They've developed sea tagging (top image), using sea water to create visuals – the salinity means that the images evaporate at a considerably slower rate than normal water, and clean advertising, using custom made equipment that lifts dirt from surfaces to create messages. And there's a whole lot more, ranging from bioluminescence to moss art and solar art.

In the field of architecture, EcoARK in Taiwan, certainly embraces the concept of recycling wholeheartedly with its construction from a mind-blowing 1.5 million PET bottles. At three stories high, it features an amphitheatre, an exhibition hall and even a screen of falling water that is collected when it rains to be then used as air conditioning.

Smaller in scale, but big in impact, is Puma's commendable effort in reducing its shoe packaging by proposing the use of a recycled PET bag (recyclable too) with a single sheet of cardboard. If implemented, Puma stands to save 8,500 tonnes of paper, a million litres of water and a million litres of fuel, reduce paper needs by 65% and annual carbon emissions by 10 tonnes! This forms part of their efforts to develop a 360 Sustainability Program called PUMAVision – puma.safe, puma.peace and puma.creative, which will no doubt be interesting to follow.