Sustainability starts at a products conception. This tool encourages users to consider a product's impact from the very beginning of its life.
This tool works to highlight users pre-existing knowledge as well as educate further on how design can be used to lessen a products impact
One of the core pillars of this project was the importance of motivation when embarking on a more involved design process
When developing a new way of thinking about design, it can help to bounce ideas off peers, this toolkit emphasises the value of this.
Throughout my 4 years studying Product Design, sustainability and its intersection with design has become a bigger and bigger focus in my practice. I knew I wanted my Honours project to encapsulate this passion and serve as a showcase of my understanding of the impacts that we have on the planet as well as how design can be used as a vessel for change.
I’ve encountered brands and companies that have stood out as pioneers of sustainability in various ways over the years, alot through project research, but many others through my time in the outdoors industry. Each company has their own way of lowering their impact, but they all share that same willingness to sacrifice and innovate for the greater good. Seeing these examples in the real world when they don’t only exist, but thrive is one of my core motivations to try to encapsulate some of their thinking in my work.
The aim of this toolkit was to make it as widely applicable as possible, encouraging designers at every stage of their career, and at any level of understanding of sustainable design, to get involved and explore how they can help lessen our collective impact on the planet.
My hope was to share my passion in a way that inspires and interests others in the way it does me.
When I first set my sights on a design aid for this project, I was totally clueless about what form I wanted it to take. Up until this point, most of my work had been more about physical interaction rather than social, so it took alot of developing and experimenting to get it right. The first step in that process was to ask some peers to take some prompts I’d thought up, and take 15 minutes to re-design an everyday product to lower it’s impact.
The result of this mini-workshop was a better understanding of what kind of tone/format worked for the prompts, (or at least what direction to start in, this took ages to get right…) and also that the product/project that the toolkit is being used to develop, may already be as low impact as it can be, and therefore needs to be adaptable.
Taking those initial learnings, I spent the next week or two reworking prompts and experimenting with format and aesthetics in order to produce some sample cards to take to my old Secondary School, and test on design students. The thinking behind this was that by starting with designers that are just starting out, I can test the feasibility of using the cards as informational tools, as well a means of idea development.
The results of this workshop were super positive, they backed up alot of my hopes going into it, and highlighted some areas in need of attention (getting started with the toolkit, making phrasing more understandabl, etc).
Joe Macleod is the founder and Head Engineer at andEnd, a design studio that focusses on the end of a products lifecycle and what can be done with it to reduce it’s environmental impact. I spoke with him in detail about what he had seen across the industry in terms of sustainable innovations as well as areas that have so far been neglected. He gave me pointers on how to encourage users to interact with the toolkit and how to make it as egnaging as possible. And he shared with me his ideology about design and sustainabilty. All of which proved invaluable with the further development of the project.
Dr. Irene Mazzei is the sustainabilty lead at Stoane Lighting, a scottish based Lighting equipment designer and manufacturer with a library of accreditations for environmental/social sustainability (one of the first UK B-Corps, The kings award for Sustainable Development). I spoke with her about what Stoane Lighting is doing to lower their impact. Things like re-puprosing powdercoat overspray to cast into premium lampshades, developing various product lines that all start as the same extrusiomn, and their focus on designing for disassembly and repair. Again, these insights helped massively to open my mind to what was already being put into practice, and how the toolkit might be able to prompt new ideas to do the same.
1 of the key insights I gained from speaking with Joe, was the importance of engaging the user. I considered many ways of doing that throughout my development process, but the one that I focussed on most was motivating through tactile satisfaction. To do this effectively meeant breaking down every element of the toolkit to it’s component parts and interating over and over to make the tactile experience as enjoyable as possible.
It had to feel rewarding but take so long that it irritated or distracted, the tactile elements needed to feel obvious without harming the aesthetic, and most importantly, the toolkit needed to be produceable in a sustainable way.
getting the size of each element of the toolkit was an important element to consider for 2 reasons. Primarily, I wanted each part to feel as comfortable as possible in a users hand, to get as close to the toolkit parts becoming an extension of the user (… I know), rather than just a card with a prompt on it. The second consideration was one of manufacture. Paper and therefore print has a variety of established universal sizes, so by sticking to them I felt that not only would each element feel familiar in the hand, it would also be more simple to layout for print.
Generally speaking, the brands that have provided me the most inspiration during my descent into the world of ‘sustainable’ design, have all had different ways of touching on the same core feels, ideas. In order to try and capture some of that essence in the branding of my project, I started with some moodboarding of various brand identities both from within the outdoors industry and outside.
Alongside my design process becoming more and more centered around sustainability, I’ve also found myself gravitating more and more toward more minimal solutions to my design problems. With this being the final project of my uni carreer, I thought it would be worth putting some real focus into getting that approach right, without sacrificng any other part of the design.
I wouldn’t be remotely surpised if every designer suffered from indescisiveness. I know I’m not immune to it. Never before though, have I gotten so stuck in an endless spiral of tweaking, considering, scrapping, and starting again as I did while developing the branding for ths project. I was trying so hard to balance the imagery of sustainability with simplicity so as not to risk causing bias in the users design process. I wanted to be certain that the only way that Paper Futures would alter a users design, was in the way it was inteded to. For sustainability’s sake.
The result of this spiralling was days and days of page after page of concepts, developments, scribbles and self loathing, all coming to an end after the 5th telling of “dont overthink it” from the lecturers.
“Växa” – means to grow in Swedish and was chosen as a subtle nod to natures natural growth as well as that which is expected of the user as they interact with the toolkit.
After finally pulling myself together and deciding on a direction for the brand identity, I could set about experimenting with final tweaks and alterations in order to best encapsulate all of the ideas behind the project.
Depending on how generous you’re willing to be, there’s a few different details you’ll notice in the final logo… The most obvious of these is the Umlaut over the “a”, these diacratics were a big reason behind looking into languages like Swedish for the brand name as I was of the mind that they offer alot more options for iconography without manufacturing new elements for the branding. In this case, I used them to create a simple recreation of the double diamond design model, a potentially not so subtle nod to the lecturers that spent the last 4 years drilling it into us, and a peek into the intentions of the brand/product.
Next up, I rounded/softened all the corners of the wordmark in order to try and bring some of that natural, organic softness into the logo.
And if we really want to grasp a little bit, the combination of the Umlaut and the “a” somewhat resembles 2 people involved in some kind of conversation or embrace…
Going back to one of the points I made previously, the effectiveness of this toolkit relies heavily on motivating the user to engage with it. One such way to create this motivation is through tactility. From quite early on in the development of this project, I had the idea to implement debossing as a simple way to add a tactile element without taking away from the overall experience or distracting from the core aim of the tool.
I went through a few different iterations of debossing methods before I found one that left a crisp enough compression, without being visible on the reverse of the card/page. That solution ended up being a 3D printed jig and stamp of the words I wonted to press (with a 0.3mm filleted lip around the outside of each letter) with a steel plate on the back side of the card to protect from the compression being visible on the opposite side. All of this went into a vice and got crushed together with a surprising amount of force, especially given it was only paper…
Another way I was working to motivate users to keep working through the toolkit was by creating a ‘flow’ or progression through the various categories and steps. Within the cards and prompts themselves I’d developed a ‘star’ system indicating the value of each prompt or activity, but I hadn’t given much thought to the packaging of each of these sets. In the end I decided that assigning a colour to each category and designing labels for the sleeves within the box to make them easily identifiable would be the best course of action.
As a bit of a last minute tweak at the end of the project, I had to redesign the packaging, in part because I couldn’t get the materials I needed shipped in time, but also partly because I’d grown to hate the solution I had and wanted to ‘open’ everything up a bit more to create a more inviting and clear presentation of each of the categories.