Hasta La Ideas

The second Seattle Designers Accord Town Hall was held October 11th at Carbon Design Group’s studio. The event was organized by Carbon, Modern Species and AIGA Seattle. The theme of the night was “Are We There Yet?” reflecting the seemingly endless journey of designers striving to produce sustainable results for willing clients. The evening kicked off with refreshments and networking, and then moved on to the main events. Linda Wagner, of Carbon, and Gage Mitchell, of both Modern Species and AIGA Seattle, shared the emcee duties. Four speakers delivered short presentations to address the topic from their perspective (industrial design, graphic design, architecture, or business), before continuing the conversation in breakout sessions.

Ashley Arhart
Creative Director of Consumer Experience at Hornall Anderson
Ashley gets props for bringing, well, props. Her message for the evening was that sustainable design is only successful if the consumer likes it. Case in point was the incredibly noisy Sun Chips bag. Compostable, yes, but hearing it in person drove home the problem—nobody wants to broadcast that they’re snacking. Ashley went on to ruffle every print designer in attendance by declaring the book is dead… as an object of information, but alive as an object of desire. To bring this home, she used the example of Wantful, a company that allows you to create a beautiful personalized book filled with a curated selection of gifts from which a recipient can pick. By blending digital and print, Wantful delivers a richer, more meaningful experience. And meaningful experiences are vital because, the success of a product is determined by how it connects with people. (Ashley also wrote up a great detailed post about her breakout session which you can find here.)

Kirk Myers
Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at REI
Kirk’s job is to design business systems that provide sustainable outcomes. One of REI’s greatest successes in this endeavor came from partnering with other outdoor apparel manufacturers like Patagonia and Timberland to create the HIGG Index, which measurers the impact of their products. By working together, these companies were able to give their vendors an assessment tool and a very large incentive to use it. Kirk pointed out that the true focus of any company is whether or not a customer will buy a product. A sustainable product isn’t sustainable at all if it doesn’t sell. Method is a company that gets this in spades. They aren’t successful because they create sustainable products. They’re successful because they create better products with a combination of design, functionality, and affordability that makes them stand out. Sustainable products must be better all around.

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