and heavy makeup has, thankfully, fallen out of fashion in the past few decades, yielding to a desire for more “natural” beauty, but many women are still taught that the first step to looking pretty is to cover up their skin and start with a blank canvas. Yet, when we think of authentic beauty, the examples mostly offered are those of youthful and athletic people. Advertisements would have you believe that the most beautiful people in the world rely on makeup, diets, and questionable home exercise equipment when these same models themselves don’t use what they promote.
Stilettos and most other “high” heels are the same. They exist to fool women that they will be more attractive by buying products that actually ruin their feet, posture, and backs over time. While they sometimes serve functions other than fashion (such as giving women a bit more height), this could be accomplished by fashionably thick-soled shoes instead. That women regularly torture and destroy their bodies in the name of fashion, not to mention often flirting with accidents from tripping, speaks to how deeply this false view of beauty is rooted in our culture.
Sure, it can be fun to “dress up” in costumes once in a while, using makeup and clothing to temporarily play a role. I have no issue with this. However, those who habitually trade their health and natural beauty in for fashion solutions that actually harm both are playing a sad game. And those who promote this behavior are fooling themselves if they think they’re making people more beautiful.
Design at its best, however, focuses on people and seeks to understand what it can offer them to make their lives better in some way. Despite the celebrity designers foisted upon us by the design industry, successful design isn’t about some personal vision spun out and overlaid onto the world to make it seem shiny and new. Successful design is careful and considered. It responds to customers/users/participants/people, market, company, brand, environment, channel, culture, materials, and context. The most successful design is inseparable from these criteria. The most meaningful design is culturally and personally relevant, and we respond to it on the deepest levels. The best design also has a future. It is sustainable.
Design can be all of this. It needs to be all of this.
It should be clear by now what I mean by design is the problem. Design that is about appearance, or margins, or offerings and market segments, and not about real people—their needs, abilities, desires, emotions, and so on—that’s the design that is the problem. The design that is about systems solutions, intent, appropriate and knowledgeable integration of people, planet, and profit, and the design that, above all, cares about customers as people and not merely consumers—that’s the design that can lead to healthy, sustainable solutions.
Get over the guilt or shock or outrage or embarrassment or disagreement now, because none of it will be useful to you going forward. And we have a lot of work to do.
Design that is only about appearance, or margins, or offerings and market segments, and not about real people—their needs, abilities, desires, emotions, and so on.—that’s the design that is the problem.
[1] The term green has become so problematic that Adam Werbach, CEO of Act Now Productions, suggests using blue instead. This alludes to a natural color that is devoid of hippie overtones, friendly to business, and is ubiquitous on the planet (the sky). www.saatchis.com/birthofblue
[2] For more definitions of sustainability terms, consult the Dictionary of Sustainable Management. www.sustainabilitydictionary.com
CHAPTER 1
What Is Sustainability?
What Is a Systems Perspective?
Centralization and Decentralization
Because sustainability means different things to different groups and individuals, this makes it sometimes difficult to discuss it, so I’ll just give you my definition. For example, I met a “conservative environmentalist” once who was chiefly focused on climate and carbon issues. His advice to me on my own project, Reveal (a sustainability rating and labeling system for consumers—see Chapter 17), was to measure only climate-related issues (like carbon dioxide production) and leave the social issues for people to figure out on their own. My response was that if customers discovered that the product they believed to be “better” due to the ratings actually had questionable social impacts (such as animal cruelty or child or slave labor), all trust would dissipate for both those products and the rating system.
Therefore, the only way to approach sustainability effectively is from a systems perspective. We need to consider a wide perspective before diving into details. Because most things are connected to most other things, to design anything effectively requires considering what it connects to. This necessitates folding financial, social, and environmental issues together—at least at some point. For sure, these issues are widely different and require specialized knowledge and solutions, but no solution can be addressed effectively without considering its impact across all three areas. You will find, in practice, that you can’t solve everything. However, you will need to be ready to address why you can’t do everything. And, just possibly, in the process you may find that you can address more aspects than everyone around you suspected—which is quite often the result of good design. Constraints are a challenge for designers, not a limitation.
One serious problem for designers is that, even with a systems approach, there are few tools in existence that wrap these issues together. Instead, designers must learn to patch together a series of disparate approaches, understandings, and frameworks in order to build a complete solution. The good news is that these different frameworks are compatible, as you’ll see in Chapter 3, “What Are the Approaches to Sustainability?”. Their vocabulary may be slightly different, but a meta-framework can be built that organizes a coherent and somewhat complete approach to sustainability. This is what I’ve tried to do in this book.
To address the three domains of human, natural, and financial capital, it’s important to understand some of the issues central to each. Different contexts can change the priorities or urgencies of each, but all of these themes are relevant and important to understanding why sustainability is imperative.
You will find, in practice, that you can’t solve everything. However, you will need to be ready to address why you can’t do everything. And, just possibly,
