Capturing Sustainability Through Design

Heading Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

A few weeks ago I sat in Design of Visual images, a required course for my major, as my professor introduced the second project of the semester. A lot of people assume that being a communication design student entails art, hours of creative thinking, and making things look pretty on Illustrator… if only it were that simple. When explaining my major to other people, I like to give a little spiel to put things in perspective. With everything you see in marketing, advertising, PR, communication design is psychological process of creating these things to evoke some sort of feeling; to manipulate an audience utilizing only one of human sense: vision.

Backtracking to the day I was sitting in class, I learned that our project would consist of creating a 3-panel, black and white, typographically dominant poster on some environmental or sustainability related theme of our choice. The goal was to educate, persuade or inform an audience, while also creating something visually unique suitable for our portfolios. I sat back in my chair, took a deep breath and let the complexities of design invade my thoughts.

Immediately, from my experience with environmental studies in high school, I became overwhelmed with focusing on the topic of sustainability.

I began the project the same way I do with any design project: research. I spent hours looking through various sustainability initiatives, browsing through non-profit websites to federal funded campaigns and statutes involved with sustainability. In terms of my prior knowledge of sustainability, I was familiar with the concepts, the terminology the definitions. I guess I wasn’t really searching to find anything new about this topic, but rather just choose something that would allow me to create something visually appealing with typography.

I narrowed down my research to three themes of sustainability that I could potentially create a 3-panel, typographically dominant poster mainlylothing swaps, green spaces in cities and water conservation. There comes a point in the design process, usually after days spent hunched over sketch paper or the computer, when everything falls into place; when you just get it right. I created mood boards, mock-ups and sketches for each of these themes, waiting for that moment to hit me. No matter how long I spent planning and organizing or even shifting my perspective on each of these topics, the more distant I became from the whole point of this project. I slowly began to realize that I was losing sight of the purpose of my major: to psychologically create something that will influence and audience in a significant way, simply by connecting with their visual perception.

I knew I had to take a step back from what I was doing, and take an entirely new approach. Instead of carrying out research with a specific focus in hope of finding interesting content, I began reading without a purpose. I came across satirist environmental activists, inspirational Instagram accounts dedicated to electricity conservation, and beautifully designed blogs focused on sustainable living. I lost track of all the “research” I was doing because I could actually relate to these things, and enjoyed what I was reading about.

I became invested in the issues these people were discussing, and it was only after this process, when I had that moment of realization. I was browsing Pinterest one day when I found this poster created by Steve Le, called “Problem Me, Solution Me”, depicting two reversed visualizations of a pollution and sustainability (check it out in the link). I did some more research and discovered an interview on Wired.com with Le explaining the poster:

“For a problem that was caused by us, we have the ability to clean up our mess and solve global warming. It is our world, we should treat it with the utmost care”

I resonated with this statement and decided I wanted my final design to portray the ignorance humans have when it comes to sustainability. We are literally “blinded” by the very source of energy we consume each day. With this idea in mind, I focused my research on the overconsumption of electricity, and how the very thing that was produced as a way to advance us, is the thing that ultimately ends up burning us. I worked to visualize electricity in attempt to represent this contradiction and ironic relationship we have with it: as humans we rely on electricity.It lights up our cities and homes, yet the more we use it, the more we harm the environment.

Last week I was on a plane returning from fall break, and I had his project in mind. I started to notice the movement of electricity through cities and just how significant it is. This visualization inspired me to create a cityscape composed of typography for my poster. Beneath the cityscape I included the word “blinded”, in the same font used to create the skyline. The overall intention of this was to educate the audience on the power of our individual impact as humans that is so often underestimated.

I learned a lot of things about myself and the importance of what I do as a designer through this process. Sure, communication design can be fun and creative, but at the end of the day it is so much more than this. With this project specifically, my perspective towards sustainably changed immensely and I shifted the way I normally tend to think. I started this project thinking I would create a poster promoting clothing swaps and came out with a poster focused on electricity. Despite my tendency to stick to a clear and concise plan, sometimes you just have to take a step back, clear your head and take a different angle.