Benedetta Crippa

 I felt that within my essay plan my weakest point was 2c: 

Point 2c:

How designers are integrating sustainability into every step of the design process. Designers are seeing this from a positive, creative point of view rather than a capitalist, economic one. 

It's an important point, but unlike my others I didn't have a strong theory to back it up. Coincidentally, just as I had finished my essay plan my friend sent me a link to an article that had the perfect solution. 

Andersen, M., 2020. 5 Takeaways From Eod’S Ecology + Design Panel Discussions. [online] Eye on Design. Available at: <https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/5-takeaways-from-eods-ecology-design-panel-discussions/> [Accessed 24 November 2020].

To start off the session, Eye on Design editor Meg Miller spoke with Benedetta Crippa, lead designer at the Stockholm Environment Institute, about a course she teaches at Konstfack University on “visual sustainability.” Crippa started the course after seeing many designers, herself included, grapple with the question of how to reconcile designing and making with environmental sustainability. “I felt it is really urgent to say that sustainability is not about stopping existing or designing, or limiting creativity, but rather acting with responsibility, understanding ourselves as relational beings to everything and everyone else around us.” 

Crippa stressed her view that visual literacy is crucial to understanding inequity and encouraging change. “There’s a common narrative that the best graphic design can do [in regards to sustainability] is to just print less, print better, or do good storytelling about sustainability to foster the cause. But for me the question is, how can my visual work not just be about something, but be it? How can I not only just explain, but do?” To that end, she wrote a manifesto to guide her own practice (parts of which you can find here), building on a framework of responsibility, integrity, and change. In her work, sustainability manifests itself in challenging power; working with folk craft, complexity, and work found at the margins; and making sure her graphic design is in service of dialogue, rather than persuasion.

I love how here Crippa perfectly encompasses the importance of design being sustainable from a holistic, structural aspect - not just symbolic. It fits perfectly into what I was trying to discuss within this point.