Shifting Designers to Tackle Climate Change
Episode 8 – AIGA DEC Shifted Panel
Former Climify guests Katie Patrick and Lisa Zimmermann rejoin Eric for a panel discussion on this special episode recorded at the 2021 AIGA Design Educators Community ShiftED Conference. Each tackles tough questions about how and why all designers must address climate change in their work teaching in the classroom and creating in the workplace.
Listen to this episode on: Spotify, Apple, Google and other places you get your podcastsAbout our guest
Katie Patrick is an Australian American environmental engineer, designer, and author of How to Save the World, How to Make Changing the World the Greatest Game We've Ever Played. And host to the podcast, How to Save the World, where she investigates academic research in environmental psychology.
She specializes in what she calls Fitbit for the Planet Design, which means applying data-driven gamification and behavior change techniques to environmental problems. Katie has worked on environmental gamification projects with NASA, JPL, Stanford University, UNEP, Google, the University of California, Magic Leap, and the Institute for the Future.
Katie is the founder of urbancanopy.io, a map-based application that uses satellite imaging of urban heat islands and vegetation cover to encourage urban greening and cooling initiatives. She's also the co-founder of Energy Lollipop, a Chrome extension - an outdoor screen project that shows the electric grid's CO2 emissions in real-time.
Lisa Zimmermann is a German-Irish design researcher and educator specializing in "climifying" the profession of Communication Design.
While her passion for advertising, copywriting and design persists until today, she realized early on that she couldn't work for traditional ad agencies for moral reservations towards working for clients she doesn't consider ethically sound.
Her initial research into Sustainable Graphic Design Practice in Ireland, undergone during an M.A. in Design Practice led her to specialize in this niche area of Graphic/Communication Design. According to her findings, Sustainable Graphic Design can only be achieved through close collaboration of the design, print, paper technology, and IT sectors, and she made an effort to work in all four of them, to gain a deeper understanding of their point of view and pain points. An M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences at Trinity College Dublin led her to undergo research in environmentally friendly paper sizing options – paper sizing is the process of coating paper with starch and chemical ingredients to make it possible to print on it.
Lisa currently lectures a broad range of students in the Design faculty of Griffith College in Dublin, Ireland in the areas of web design, typography, communication design, and digital tools/software skills. But rather than just integrating sustainability principles in the existing modules she teaches, she is also developing a "Certificate in Sustainable Communication Design" program aimed at professionals.
Lisa is passionate about her dog Milo, gardening, learning, cold-water-swimming, and her new podcast "Conscious Communication Design" (available on iTunes, Spotify, etc). She also hosts workshops on Digital Environmentalism and wants to expand her network, so please get in touch!
On the web
Watch the entire AIGA DEC Panel here
Music in this episode
Theme music by Casual Motive
Climate Design Assignments
At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.
