Building a Sustainable Design Community

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photograph by Brigitte Sire

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That's the power of critical mass, says Casey: "Now that 100,000 people are a part of it, we can tell any client, 'We're going to ask these hard questions, but you can go down the street [to other design firms] and they're all going to ask the same questions.' We're all going to, at a certain level, share our resources. It doesn't give them an option not to have that conversation."

One key development is the move by companies such as Adobe, Autodesk, and New Leaf Paper to adopt the accord. "We looked at each other and went, 'Wow, that's cool,' " says Michelle Mann, VP of sustainability at Adobe. "It's a very good alignment for Adobe, given both our own commitment to sustainability and the interest of the design community, who are major customers of ours." Having these companies at the table instantly multiplies the effect that the accord can have on products, services, and systems.

And as this movement spreads through the academic community, students will be exposed to the conceptual tools, standards, and support needed to transform design. Ken Friedman, a member of the 1960s avant-garde art movement Fluxus who has become a respected figure in the design-research community, learned about the Designers Accord as he was preparing to become dean of the design faculty at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. At his instigation, Swinburne's entire design curriculum is being reworked so that environmental concerns are part of every student's experience. Friedman calls the accord "definitely a product of design thinking and beautifully done. Instead of a customer-service process for a bank or a new product for the marketplace, what we have here is a social-change process." Cumulus, the world's largest association of design schools, has also endorsed the accord, and 10 more programs from Mexico to Finland have signed on.

Stories like those are encouraging, but the accord is still voluntary and self-policing, without standards or methodologies for things such as reducing carbon footprints. Considering that members belong to a range of disciplines from graphic design to architecture to industrial design, it's difficult even to imagine a single set of benchmarks that would be relevant. All that makes it hard to gauge real impact beyond good intentions.

In the end, the effectiveness of the Designers Accord will be determined collectively by the community. "We've gone through the first phase, getting people signed up to the idea," says Tim Brown, Casey's boss at Ideo and an advisory board member of the accord. He says they're now focused on building the right infrastructure, both online and off, to allow the community to fully blossom. "That's going to take a little while and some real effort. We've got to raise funds and get some partners in place."

For Casey, having that infrastructure in place will mean taking a step back. Right now, she is somehow handling the day-to-day management of the accord, her full-time job at Ideo, and her 3-year-old twins. "They are the great balancers," she says of her children. Her focus is intimidating; her enthusiasm for the cause won't be satisfied until she has enlisted Oprah and is making inroads in the policy world as well. "This movement has the potential to be as big as the entire creative community," she says. "Designers bring optimism and creativity, not apocaphilia."