I just stumbled upon this brilliant article which is actually a presentation given by a designer at a green-design conference, but he’s included all his slides and videos in the page so it works nicely on his blog.
In this article he points to the massive responsibility designers have in terms of being ‘green’, Eg there is the obvious dilemma (for a print designer) that they make money designing stationary and brochures and the more they design the more money they make, when really we should be encouraging companies to go paperless and use email and websites instead (ha! that’s why I’m a web designer 🙂 ).
But what is most fascinating about his article, aside from the wicked video animation of all the flight activity over the USA in a day, are the ideas he got out of air traffic controllers about how use of fuel and emissions might be reduced:
“Better airport signage = better retrieval of baggage = better turn around time for aircraft loading and unloading = more gates available through operating hours = more aircraft can be landed in a given time period = less aircraft time in the air waiting to land = less fuel wastage from circling aircraft.â€
So designers can actually help make a massive difference, and reduce carbon emissions by designing better signage. Now that’s a little more significant than the impact a batch of compliments slips has on the planet don’t you think?
Check out Ben Terret’s article I am a designer, use me better here