Resolved: raising awareness
(This is the fifth entry in a series about re-examining how we make climate-oriented goals as designers. If you haven’t read the earlier installments you might want to consider starting there; the intro is here, the second entry is here, the third is here, and the fourth is here.)
When is the first time that you became aware of the climate crisis? How did you find out? What kind of an impact did it have on you—were you unconcerned or did it change your entire perspective? Maybe somewhere in between? No matter what your first encounter with the topic was though, you couldn’t respond—even in disbelief—without being aware of it in the first place. And we can’t respond adequately if we aren’t informed correctly and compellingly.
I’ve said it before and will say it again: design is about communication. Good design communicates effectively and efficiently; we are employed and hired to be compelling communicators. Outright climate denial may be declining—even fossil fuel companies and conservative policymakers are beginning to admit that humans have had a direct hand in changing our climate and warming the planet, but sadly that has basically meant that greenwashing has been edging its way in. We here in the Climate Designers community and beyond know that we need more than a carbon tax here, or a clean energy rebate there; we need real messaging, real urgency, real justice—real, tangible, leadership and examples—and real communication. That’s where designers come in.
Stepping into awareness
Awareness is different from education, it’s the crucial first step in learning more. Like was said above, you can’t choose to learn about a problem that you haven’t heard of yet. And for designers that are looking to take small steps into climate activism, raising awareness is probably the most accessible thing to begin doing. Motion designer Margaret To said to me, “The main challenges I see hindering motion designers from pledging to be a clean creative are awareness and education. Not everyone has the ability to choose the clients they work with, especially designers who are just starting out in their careers and [have] to work to pay the bills. Once we have the awareness, however, we can gradually transition to work with more climate-friendly clients.” This is a universal feeling across all design disciplines; though, getting to that point where you are working with or for your dream clients is too often just that—a dream. But it is the challenge of moving in that direction that is work worth doing, and even just knowing that that is where you want to be is worth celebrating and feeling good about. Margaret continues, “we shouldn’t feel overly guilty if we’re not there yet and working with clients we’re not proud of. It is a process to transition, and personally, I’m still learning to identify the type of clients to work with, and where to best contribute my storytelling skills to align with initiatives I support.” Exactly; we progress at the speed that we can, as we can.
But the critical nature of raising awareness offers us opportunity; especially for designers who feel like they have little other control over their design careers at this point. We’ll briefly address how this is an opportunity for individual designers—because it is worth going into, but that could be a completely different entry—and then we’ll unpack how raising awareness is an opportunity for the design industry and what kind of goals we can set and expect for 2022.
The Six Americas
Let’s start off by defining what I mean by raising awareness being an opportunity. Climate change seems like it would be a ubiquitous idea in our global culture today, however, it is anything but an agreed-upon event. Even among people who are aware of the topic, there is not a consensus about how—or even if—it should be addressed at all. For instance, since 2008, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has kept track of how Americans feel about issues of climate; they broke down the population into several different groups that they call the Six Americas. Those populations are, from most to least engaged: Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive. We know that if people don’t have information—or if they are misinformed—that they will not act, or if they do they will respond in a way that is not appropriate to the situation, and climate change is no different.
Raising awareness in meaningful ways, like calling out local climate issues, demanding that politicians legislate as climate protectors, and yes, even designing with the climate in mind (and being open to explaining your methods), are ways to reach the Disengaged, Doubtful, and the Dismissive in the places that intersect with their hopes, fears, and goals. Remember that just because climate change is a global crisis, it does not follow that just any reason for solving it will resonate with any single person. Compassion dictates that we meet those who are unaware of the stakes of the crisis where they are, not where we want or expect them to be. To be clear though, I don’t say that to guilt anyone into being climate evangelists or apologists; I just mean that many people will not engage with information that asks them to change their habits if they do not see how their lives would be impacted.
The Six Americas is not just unique to the United States. It’s probably safe to say that all populations could be split up thusly and so that means that almost anywhere you go, in any nation, there will be people who would begin their journey in climate activism if only they knew how the actual effects of climate change—not propaganda or Hollywood exaggeration—would alter their lives.
Individuals in community
The vast majority of us—whether we are product designers, web designers, fashion designers, or any other kind of designer—are not in a position to pick our clients, our employers, or even the projects that we work on. Just staying employed is work enough these days, but one thing that we can do as individuals that can empower us is raising awareness with design on our own time. Self-initiated projects are an excellent way to learn new skills, at your own pace, and to focus on topics that matter to you. By definition, a self-initiated project is not exploitative; which is a major plus. They look good in portfolios and on social media as well—and employers (most of the time) like self-starters as candidates.
This series has set out to emphasize the systemic nature of climate change and to remind us that it is in community and with solidarity that we will find our success. With that in mind, perhaps finding ways to do self-initiated projects as a community would be the perfect way to merge the ideas behind these Resolved entries with the opportunity that raising awareness of climate issues presents us. What climate issues drive you? That might be a great place to start.
Pushing design to do better
On the scale of industry, our design disciplines affect and are affected by the climate in many different ways; the issues that package designers have are not the issues that user interface designers have and branding designers and illustrators have separate issues still. But because our work has impacts on the environment, we all have ways that we can push our industries to climate awareness.
One way is through the efforts of groups like Clean Creatives, an organization that raises awareness of the issue of climate change by calling out greenwashing campaigns and urging designers, PR firms, and ad agencies to refuse to work with fossil fuel clients. Greenwashing, or as it could also be called, lying to avoid the blame for the climate crisis, is a dangerous practice and is one that seeks to undermine all efforts to inform people of the importance of climate change. Greenwashing is an issue that especially falls under the purview of designers. Designers accept money to create these campaigns and almost every kind of design could be implicated in the practice. Clean Creatives seeks to build unity within a subset of designers and marketers around the goal of leaving this type of dishonest design in the past. There are many other such groups—certainly, there are more than I know about—and not enough room in this entry, so be sure to share links to more with all of us over on our Mighty Networks site.
Another way to raise awareness would be to push for and celebrate sustainable or environmentally-friendly practices from within our industries. Things like award shows, media coverage, conferences, and college lectures. Even on a local level we could be doing these things through the chapters of our design organizations. While groups like Clean Creatives focus on the critical task of eliminating the negative effects of our professions, we should be creating excitement around the positive developments. We want to reward innovation in the face of a changing environment, reward compassionate design in the oncoming shadow of mass migrations, and reward hopeful creations in the midst of all that seeks to divide us into camps and nations, all out for ourselves. Ultimately, when it comes to climate change, we can design fences, or we can design bridges—there is not much in between.
The work begins
We cannot begin to work on the other goals in this series; goals like increasing the importance that we put on sustainability, reimagining our relationship to profit-first mentalities, and on revising how we teach design and how we integrate the climate into our work, without widespread awareness of the issues at hand. And like the goals in this series, they absolutely are not for all of us individually. These are realistic goals for our industries. And if we do not talk about them—if we do not make room for these discussions—then we will not reach them. The tools needed to accomplish this are there for us to use; the most important of them being our voices, our hearts, and our minds. Let’s take the rest of this year and push to make our slices of the overall design industry more forward-thinking, more compassionate, and more future-proof.
Design focuses on solving clients’ problems; this here though is a problem partially caused by design. It’s a problem looking for a new solution—it will take dedication, time, and care. Because, in the end, we cannot solve this problem without being resolved ourselves.
So, call-to-action time
Head over to the Climate Designers community space on Mighty Networks and let us know what you’re doing to increase awareness of climate issues in design. Lastly, I’ll leave you with this quote from the First Things First Manifesto (2020) on changing the future of design:
“Because of this, we call for a massive change in what and how designers design. Climate change is critically entangled with class, race, and gender-based dominance, we can no longer push merely for sustainability, but must create new systems that undo and heal what’s been done.”
For more information
The wonderful people that responded to my questions provided a ton of resources for more learning. Please take a look and add more here!
Climate Designers
Eye On Design
Re-nourish
Little Fox Design
Sustainable Web Manifesto
Sustainable Web Design
This collection of methods of sustainable web design (in German!)
SDStandard
ClimateAction.tech
B Corp
Clean Creatives
Climate Storytelling Playbook
Green Production Guide
Special Thanks
I want to thank everyone that participated in this series. It could not have happened with you. Everyone, please go check out their websites!
Carly Schonberg
Tim Frick
Holly Robbins
Jonathan White
Margaret To
Alex Quinto
Agota Jonas
Tanisha Mutha
Gerrit
Olivia Dias
Be part the conversation
Perspective is a gift and with each new perspective the Field Guides get better.
Whether you are a prospective writer/contributor, a commenter, or a reader: new experiences, new connections, and ways of seeing the world leave us richer than before.
This entry was written by
Matt McGillvray
Matt is a designer and illustrator living near Portland, Maine, and has been working for more than a decade doing branding, illustration, web design, print design, social media posts, and even a little SEO.
When not designing he’s usually reading, writing, or running. His current big writing project is a book about design and climate change. He is a chronic teller of puns and will not apologize for that.