Published June 29, 2007 Artists, Events, Works, Exhibitions
James David Morgan

The Designer’s Dilemma

Valerie Casey at Frog Design has penned an excellent call to arms asking the design community to more meaningfully address issues of climate change. She indicts us for shying away from the challenge, and lambastes those who have tried for our limited scope:

“Our addiction to sweeping change has hobbled us from seeing the most obvious opportunities for improvement. In order to create a radical position around sustainability, we need to change our concept of design. Our first green products must be ourselves.”

With this article, Frog Design issued a new statement of purpose, and challenged designers to create a new community ethos:

“We ask each member of the the design community to commit to these principles and join with us in building upon them:

Collectively:

  • Helping craft a larger social equity protocol for the design community
  • Publicly ratifying that agreement, and committing to its compliance
  • Contributing to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design
  • Advancing the intellectual understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective

Individually:

  • Offering green analysis to clients, or partnering with others to conduct this analysis
  • Providing material alternatives for sustainable product development
  • Investigating manufacturing processes and rewarding green innovation
  • Minimizing environmental impact from prototyping or model-making activity
  • Publicly reporting the carbon footprint of our firms
  • Becoming educated about the environmental impact of our work

Everything we know is inverted. Everything we rested our beliefs on is cast in a new light. Change happens fast, and we need to act quickly. We are revisiting our practices, our methods, and our philosophies. We are talking to each other. We are leaving our egos behind.

If you are ready for change, join us. Email green@frogdesign.com”

The Groundswell Collective is proud to uphold these values. We are partnered with GAIA Host Collective, which generates 70% of its energy from on-site solar and wind power systems. We encourage all our clients to be hosted on GAIA’s servers, because it minimizes our environmental impact.

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