Hasta La Ideas

We’ve got a post-script from last month’s Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting at Design Concepts in Madison. Thanks to Elysa Soffer for her thoughts and photographs.

Casual, collegial, and you might even say noisy (in a good way), Design Concepts hosted Madison, Wisconsin’s first Town Hall on November 12. Held in our “Open Space,” there was non-stop yakking from 6 ’til well past 9, and we enjoyed some great local wines (yes, Wisco wines) beers, wraps, and cheese.

We had a great turn out, including our friendly competitors in product design Brooks Stevens, Bit7, Intense Engineering, Inspire, and BestAbode; graphic design firms Gage Mitchell and Swink; marketing firm Heibing; local behemoths GE Medical and FISKARS; and a smattering of MIAD and MATC students. Presenters were Jim Armstrong of Good for Business, Dan Lipscomb of FISKARS, and Design Concepts’ own Mark Cors.

The majority of our guests were still in the “pre-Accord” state (presenting an opportunity for proselytizing), so Design Concept’s Rachel DeSmidt kicked things off with a thorough introduction to the Designers Accord.

Mark Cors described Design Concepts’ sustainability efforts so far. Design Concepts has established an ever-expanding Ethernet “green library” of relevant articles and information for use by its project teams. More recently, Mark and Rachel have focused on spearheading the institutionalization of Design for Disassembly as a consistent component of our design methodology. The take-away: disassembly is a necessary precursor to recycling, and designing to facilitate disassembly is both relatively easy to implement and sell to a client. The Design Concepts DFD Guidelines were given to the attendees, and are available for download.

Jim Armstrong of the Madison-based marketing and communications design firm Good for Business, spoke passionately and persuasively about alternative business paradigms. Long-time members of Business for Social Responsibility, Jim’s firm engages in non-traditional marketing, representing clients who want to work with a conscience.

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