Warming up to green

Last month at the Make/Think: AIGA Design Conference in Memphis, AIGA unveiled The Living Principles for Design, which “weaves together environmental protection, social equity, and economic health” into a new sustainability framework. So, why was I not jumping for joy?

Image by ♥ellie♥ – Flickr

Upon hearing this news, my initial concern was that the design community had birthed yet another passionate call to action. Recall the manifestos of the past: Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth (1998) and Rick Poyner’s update to Ken Garland’s 1964 First Things First (2000). More recently, Stefan Sagmeister dropped his sincere, personal navel-gazing tome called Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far. Like most manifestos, they are long on principles and passion, and short on implementation details.

With The Living Principles, AIGA took a pragmatic approach to what is a complex issue. The authors began by analyzing “the collective wisdom found in decades of sustainability theories” to better understand the sustainability landscape that is relevant to designers. The resulting document is a restrained, broad-stroked philosophy centered around four interdependent sustainability streams—Environmental Protection, Social Equity, Economic Health, and Cultural Vitality—replete with behavioral guidelines for each stream. But is that enough?

As evidenced by the genealogy document that the authors provided, The Living Principles merely joins a growing body of similar manifestos without furthering the overarching cause. While it does bring clarity, accessibility and relevance to the mainstream of the design community, in my view it fails to address three critical concerns:

• Success indices that help measure or standardize what it is “good”
• Strategies that tie sustainability to the financial bottom-line
• Case studies that show the path for others to follow

The AIGA has lagged behind other design organizations, such as AIA and IDSA, in bringing sustainability practices to bear. The Living Principles is a good start, but there is so much left to do.