It’s always nice to see a good tradition develop. The third SHIFT: A Green Salon, a quarterly, Ignite Portland-inspired, slightly modified pecha kucha by AIGA Portland took place last night at Ecotrust.
SHIFT asks the seemingly simple question from this post’s title. As at the 2nd SHIFT, back in February, the 10 presenters’ answers varied along the execution-concept spectrum. This time around, the whats, hows and the whys balanced out even more. (Read the full list of presentations here.) What united them was thoughtfulness: the designer community and many in adjacent industries want to do good and care deeply about the impact of their work. Very encouraging.
At the same time, as my wife and event guest Lindsay pointed out, events like SHIFT are essentially preaching to the choir. Everyone gathered at the Ecotrust event space was already on board with sustainability and sustainable design. (The problem isn’t unique to SHIFT, of course.) How can designers grow that choir? What role do marketers play in that process?
As for the presentations, leaning toward the execution end were:
- Natalie Guidry and Jessie Carver introduced a commercial printer audit tool and paper calculators for evaluating environmental sustainability of printing.
- Cary Seely summarized the paper production, energy use, and waste management processes at a paper mill.
- Scott Davis applied a story-plotting framework to the design process, proceeding from facts to contradictions to possibilities and anxiety stages, using the example of a bamboo iPhone case. Update: Scott’s presentation on SlideShare.
- Annie Wilkins proposed a few simple solutions for reducing waste when eating at food carts.
On the big-picture side:
- Stephen Landau and Erin Kurtz deconstructed “digital hypocrites” energy consumption and championed progressive deployment (iteration), efficiency, knowledge of audience needs, and “communications that matters” to shift the culture of digital marketing from the what-for to the why of energy use. Update: Stephen’s and Erin’s presentation on SlideShare.
- Edward Flynn played a video demonstrating “green” and “sustainable” are meaningless words to the human on the street.
- A trio of PSU students Micah Fuller, Shannon Crutchfield, MinJi Pak explained on the case of bottles why “glass kicks ass and plastic is not so fantastic”.
- Laura Luethje encouraged designers to consider their paper choices and source paper from domestic producers and consider. Echoing Stephen’s and Erin’s presentation, Laura offered the most interesting statement of the night: “Paper stores carbon throughout its lifetime”.
- Stacy Westbrook contrasted designing for needs with designing for wants. She called on designers to stop making artifacts and start making systems.
And in a category all by himself, David Vanadia greened up KISS (the band) for us, capping the evening with a dose of greenwashing satire.
See you at SHIFT 4 in August! (Don’t forget to bring a mug, which gets you free beer.)Â I might just make the deadline for submissions this time.
Did you attend last night’s SHIFT? What did you think? What does sustainable design mean to you?
Update 6/11/10: Flickr collection of photos and videos from SHIFT 3.
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Thanks for this great post Peter. We’ve discussed the need for getting business community to attend. It’s really essential. We can do that by encouraging presenters and attendees to invite clients and we can reach out to entities like Metro, City of Portland and the multitude of groups or associations that deal with education, tourism, food and wine industry, transportation, etc.
@Jane: Thank YOU for organizing. As co-organizer of the Beyond 2020 unconference, I hear you on the challenge of having “outsiders” attend and bringing them into the fold. You can only do so much.
I brought my copywriter friend Mike Russell (@pivotalwriting) as well. I’d be happy to spread the word here and in my monthly enews for the August event. A bring-a-non-designer-along promotion might help, too!
Thanks for the SHIFT recap Peter! As the Sustainability Chair for AIGA Portland, part of my next agenda for our sustainability initiative is to reach out more to the local business community. I hope to talk to all of the entities that Jane mentioned, plus any others not currently on my radar. Any suggestions are appreciated.
@Lisa: My pleasure. As I mentioned in my reply to Jane, expanding the reach of any sustainability-related event in Portland is a challenge.
I will definitely do my part in spreading the word and inviting people. You may want to ask other participants to do likewise. I’d also encourage you to connect with Sustainable Business Network of Portland http://sbnportland.org/ and Voice for Innovation and Sustainability http://voisalliance.org/, two sustainability-minded membership orgs in town.
I’ll let you know if I think of other ways to grow the SHIFT choir.