Background

Design Can Change is an initiative aimed at uniting the world's graphic designers to use their influence and purchasing power to combat climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

. It was developed by smashLAB

SmashLAB

This article is about the Canadian design company. For the Discovery Channel show see Smash LabsmashLAB is an interaction design firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia, founded in 2000 by Eric Karjaluoto and Eric Shelkie. The firm originally offered a wide range of design services, from identity...

, a design firm based in Vancouver, BC.

Objectives

According to the website, the Design Can Change initiative intends to:

• Bring together the design community to leverage our collective strength
• Establish a set of definitive standards that we can all readily implement
• Showcase the work of designers committed to the environment
• Promote designers and studios who embrace sustainable practices
• Raise awareness of the importance of sustainable-thinking

One of its objectives was to highlight the fact that designers influence the buying decisions of businesses and organizations with massive advertising budgets and being in control of such vast purse strings gives committed designers the ability to make a huge difference.

Pledge

At the core of the initiative is a pledge that asks for a designer’s commitment to a sustainable practice and green mindset. The pledge's five guidelines require that its signators:

• engage in the topic,
• consider their choices carefully,
• put their knowledge to use,
• share information with others, and
• unite with the community to spark change.

Designers who take the pledge are listed in the site's searchable directory of like-minded studios.

Results

When the Design Can Change website went live in April 2007, it was one of the first websites dedicated to the graphic designer's relationship to the issues surrounding climate change and one of a few online resources for sustainable graphic design

Sustainable graphic design

Sustainable graphic design is the application of sustainability principles to graphic design. It considers the environmental impacts of graphic design products throughout a life cycle that includes: raw material; transformation; manufacturing; transportation; use; and disposal.Graphic designers...

.

Design Can Change quickly gained significant recognition with the international design community, and by May 2008, it had acquired over 1800 pledges from designers in 77 different countries. Since its launch, it has won awards and received mentions on popular design portals, industry publications, and hundreds of blogs. Articles about the initiative have been published by The Vancouver Sun

The Vancouver Sun

The Vancouver Sun is a daily newspaper first published in the Canadian province of British Columbia on February 12, 1912. The paper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. It is published six days a week, Monday to Saturday...

 and The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

.

As a result of Design Can Change, smashLAB’s Creative Director, Eric Karjaluoto, has been invited to speaking events put on by design associations such as HOW Magazine, AIGA

Aiga

‘Aiga is a word in the Samoan language which means 'family.' The aiga is the family unit of Samoan society and differs from the Western sense in that it consists more than just a mother, father and children. The Samoan family, also referred to as an 'extended family' is based on the culture's...

, and New Media BC.

In April 2008, TIME Magazine selected Design Can Change for inclusion in the Design 100. TIME's annual Design 100 lists "the people and ideas behind today's most influential design".

External links

• Design Can Change
• Design by Nature
• PingMag - Grassroots Projects: Design Can Change
• Treehugger - Design Can Change: Encouraging Sustainability in the Design Field