What is going green? What is so natural about being natural? How organic is organic? Though many of these points and others were discussed at this years Y Conference held by the AIGA chapter of San Diego, most could say, what was it the we accomplished this past weekend? Did we solve global warming? Did we develop an alternative resource to our depleting oil reserves across the world? Hardly. We simply discussed the power we contain of spreading a message of change.
Its hard to believe that graphic design can actually make a change or difference in our world. The use of paper, toxic materials, and electricity are obviously a major contributor to the rise in the depreciation of our already suffering world. How do we change this? The truth be told, there is only so little we can change that has already changed. We are entitled to create and innovate new ideas to help create an even larger global impact than the products that we produce in our everyday lives. And it goes beyond just using recycled paper.
Below are some of the ideas of changed discussed and shared over the 3 day conference.
- Use efficient layout practices when laying out die-lines for packaging, also utilize your creativity to based your layout to allow more use of one sheet of paper.
- Think of alternative usage of your product, rather than providing it as disposable item. (ei. Elephant Pharmacy)
- If it isn't broken, don't fix it. Why do we need to develop products with post-modern intentions? Many of our histories structures and designs were perfected many years ago. We shouldn't be reinventing the book, just adding to what already exists. (ei. Greenroofs, Solar Parking Ports, Flexcore)
- Captain Obvious... Cut down on printing. PDF or reuse 1 sided paper print outs for test prints / sketching.
These are only a few points of many that were discussed. When it comes to designers, many can be over-dramatic, to a point were they think, "I'll have to stop doing print design, I'm destroying the planet otherwise." This is not the case. As designers, we create truly beautiful pieces of art that should be celebrated, not shunned.
This conference was not all pointing the finger and trash talking (no pun intended) one another. We came together as a community to acknowledge our delima. There is an obvious need for change. And of course, as said by many speakers, no one is entirely green by any means, sometimes you can't help but provide a product that was made from pvc and contains millions of toxins, clients want what they want. But that only gives us more incentive to help use our resources to provide our clients with environmental friendly options and change our processes and creativity to be more efficient and beneficial for our clients, our design community, ourselves and our planet.
