Celery Design Lives the Green Message

by Brian Dougherty

Nearly 10 years ago, I started a design firm called Celery with two friends in an apartment in San Francisco. We wanted to do thoughtful, green design - quirky and interesting, yet also eco-friendly. The word "celery" seemed like the perfect representative for those qualities. I felt then, as I feel now, that good design is a powerful way to make the world a better place. And since I couldn't find any established graphics studios doing it, I figured that starting my own studio was the only way I'd be able to do "green" for a living.

Swimming Against the (Waste)Stream

Prior to starting Celery, I worked as a packaging designer at a software company. We mainly created oversized boxes for CD-ROM games. I had lots of ideas about how we could make our packaging more eco-friendly—like using recycled paperboard, shrinking the box, eliminating the plastic jewel case—but none of them fit easily into "the way we do things." These efforts taught me early on that it's not easy to change the status quo. It also taught me that most people don't think that concern for the environment fits into their job descriptions.

Everyone at that software company acknowledged the wastefulness of the packaging arms race (ever larger packaging for ever smaller products) but none could find the time or guts to create a viable alternative. That attitude is slowly changing. Big retailers like Wal-Mart are starting to request right-sized packaging from manufacturers. Innovators like Apple are showing that small can be beautiful. Tighter government regulations, mainly in the European Union, are also putting the squeeze on super-sized packaging at many global companies.

Earlier this year, an executive at a major toy company told me that he welcomed the outside intervention. He said, "Someone's going to ultimately have to regulate package size, because no company's going to risk putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage with a smaller box." Yet regulation is an inefficient and often unprofitable way to solve business problems. It sounds to me like an industry that could use a healthy dose of design innovation.

Shifting Paradigms

Sustainable packaging can be a good idea for many reasons. This box made from recycled chipboard supplanted a customary plastic door hanger approach and garnered much positive consumer response.

One common roadblock for green design is the fact that alternative ways of doing things are often more expensive than the status quo. We search for design interventions that save money—such as eliminating unnecessary materials and processes - but it's often difficult to shave cost from existing systems by making them more eco efficient. One trick is to not replicate the existing system. Change the paradigm and create design solutions that are superior to the status quo and provide a clear return on investment for any additional costs.

One example of this is a direct mail gift pack we designed for Elephant Pharmacy. This could have been a fairly typical junk mail project. Elephant wanted to send out coupons and product samples to 30,000 addresses near their new store. A typical solution would be a plastic bag door hanger containing glossy 4-color printed coupons and samples. We could have sourced recycled plastic bags, but it would have added cost and the client would have questioned whether they were getting any bang for that extra buck. Instead, we rejected the paradigm of junk mail and approached the project as an opportunity to give 30,000 people a gift. We created an elegant gift box from recycled chipboard, with a fresh flower tucked into a bellyband. It was more expensive than a standard plastic bag, but it made a big splash in the community and the company got a clear return for their investment.

As Celery moves into its tenth year as a design studio, the stars seem to be lining up for sustainable design. Big businesses are embracing "corporate responsibility" as a way to manage risks and find new market opportunities. Green brands like Whole Foods Markets and Toyota Prius are gobbling up market share, forcing competitors to react. The whole world is waking up to the immediate need for action to combat global climate change. And all of this activity demands design innovation.

Brian Dougherty is principle of Celery Design Collaborative, an award winning leader in sustainable design specializing in graphics, packaging, and identity systems. Visit www.celerydesign.com.