Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

The Designer's Accord

At this year’s AIGA’s Compost Modern event I was really excited to be introduced to The Designer’s Accord, “a coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, business consultants, and corporations, who are working together to create positive environmental and social impact.” Originally referred to as the “Kyoto Treaty of Design,” the coalition was formed by designer, Valerie Casey of IDEO as a collective way to increase intelligence about sustainability within the business community.

To join the Accord, you must follow the coalition’s guidelines of:
1. Do no harm;
2. Communicate and collaborate;
3. Keep learning, keep teaching;
4. Instigate meaningful change;
5. Make theory action

Depending on your level of involvement in the coalition, your specific guidelines for upholding these 5 main guidelines are different. Members are divided into 3 categories: Adopters (design firms, corporations, educational institutions), Supporters (artists, freelance designers, students) or Endorsers (organizations).

For example, the guidelines for “Design Firm Adopters” are:
1. Publicly declare participation in the Designers Accord.
2. Initiate a dialogue about environmental impact and sustainable alternatives with each and every client. Rework client contracts to favor environmentally responsible design and work processes. Provide strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design.
3. Undertake a program to educate your teams about sustainability and sustainable design.
4. Measure the carbon/greenhouse gas footprint of your firm (includes operations and client engagements), and pledge to reduce your footprint annually.
5. Advance the understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective by contributing actively to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design.

It’s great to see that as more people take an interest and are more informed about the environment and the impact we have upon it, that green practices within the design field are finally being seen as mandatory vs. being optional. The Designer’s Accord is a great place where designers can educate themselves and find tools to educate their clients about what “being green” in our field really means.

There’s a great article in Business Week about Casey and the Accord here. An interview with founder, Valerie Casey about how the Accord came to be created can also be found here.

The Afterlife: Call for Entries

If you’re an eco-minded fashion designer, The Afterlife is the event of the year to participate in! AIGA San Francisco is currently rounding up green artists/fashion designers/graphic designers to participate in its 2007 Gala event with the main focus being a recycled paper fashion show/auction.

Help rescue paper from recycling limbo with a benefit auction of post-consumer paper apparel and objects d’art by some of the Bay Area’s great designers. We’ll also have a runway show, a DJ and lots of giveaways from our industry sponsors. Don’t miss it. And remember, the road to hell is paved with wasted paper.

All submissions must be made from a recycled paper product (paper that’s used before). The deadline for submission (preliminary sketches) is September 29th, 2007, so sign up or pass this on to anyone who might like to participate. Proceeds go to AIGA San Francisco.

renourish!

Finally! A comprehensive green resource for graphic designers! I was delighted to be forwarded a link to renourish.

renourish is a resource for the graphic design industry. When green design is usually discussed, most people think of buildings, products or even cars, but what about packaging? Shouldn’t magazines, business cards, brochures and websites be green? At renourish, we’re helping to start the conversation on green graphic design by providing defintions, tips, and links to sustainable resources designers can use to make their work a little greener.

Brilliant! Renourish has great topics that run the gamut of paper, ink, printers, packaging, green design firms, sustainable living, etc. Having all of this info in one place is genius. Although green design is something that most designers are concerned about and interested in, I haven’t come across a comprehensive site like this before. I would like to see the site eventually include green vendors (other than paper & printing). I’ve been compiling my own list lately and I think that would be a great resource to have accessible to more designers.

Another green design link to check out run by AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Designers) here.

Greener Printer: eco-friendly printing

As a graphic designer (print based), I’m aware of the huge impact commercial printing has on the environment. Luckily there are great eco-friendly printers out there like Greener Printer in Berkeley, CA who can help reduce the impact of printed materials.

The 4 areas Greener Printer focuses on are: 1. Water Conservation, 2. Solid Waste Reduction and Recyling, 3. Energy Conservation and 4. Pollution Prevention. In addition, Greener Printer prints on treeless and recycled content papers, exclusively prints with low VOC soy and other vegetable-based inks, uses energy efficient equipment, and offsets 100% of their energy usage with windpower. They are also a certified Green Business.

To give an idea of what they offer, Greener Printers prints business cards, calendars, brochures, postcards, catalogs, posters and many other print communication items. For non-local clients, printing is super easy— just upload files to their site and get the orders shipped (all jobs are shipped “climate cool“).

In short, if you have materials printed for yourself, your organization or your business, make sure to consider printing with environmentally responsible printers. At this point, the costs for eco-friendly printing are reasonable, the finished products are beautiful and the reduced footprint is considerable. Check here and here for info and tips on printing green.

"Natural" Beauty

It’s always good to be reminded that what the popular media deems “beautiful” is, at times, not only questionable, but false. This film, made by the Dove Self Esteem Fund, shows the ‘evolution’ of beauty at the hands of stylists, photographers, gaffers, editors, and graphic designers…