'Getting It' Right: Designers Back Up Talk with Action

By Wendy Jedlicka and Philip White

The Okala Design Guide was printed on New Leaf Opaque paper, which is composed of 100% post-—consumer waste paper that is processed chlorine—free and is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified. The inks used were CONEG toxicity—compliant and soybean oil—based.

The packaging industry is a complex—and often confusing—blend of disciplines. The industry is served not only by packaging specific professionals, but also overlapping efforts by graphic designers, industrial designers, marketers, logistics experts, psychologists, strategists and the list goes on.

Sustainability, for the more forward thinking companies, is becoming the common language all stakeholders can come to the table with, and begin to not only show in their end-product that they "get it"—but that they are now able to get it right.

A new guiding hand

Industry groups for two of the more visible stakeholders in packaging's creative process—graphic designers and industrial designers—have both made substantive and timely steps forward in supporting the development of tools for their memberships (and the design community in general) to help them navigate an effort's eco options and to broaden their creative possibilities in a quickly changing landscape.

Helping designers do right by the planet is the newly revised Okala Design Guide, written by design professionals and educators Philip White, Louise St. Pierre, and Steve Belletire. Though the Okala Design Guide addresses the design process from the product designer's perspective, the backgrounding and methodologies that make up the bulk of the guide are immediately useful for any packaging application.

The Guide is an easy to understand primer for the teaching and practice of eco-conscious design that introduces the broad precepts of eco-design, with detailed methods for estimating their impacts. "Okala" is a variation of the Hopi Indian word oqala, meaning "life-sustaining energy." The guide features thoughtful explorations of such subjects as environmental ethics, eco-design business planning, and green marketing.

An immediate impact

When it comes to the objects and materials we use every day, making an ecologically friendly decision is often challenging. This process is especially complicated for product and packaging designers who must juggle a mind-boggling array of variables in creating even the simplest products.

The Guide contains especially useful tools and tips on practical topics such as how to use biomimicry in design, how to plan for end-of-life disassembly, and how to address recycling issues. The Guide also calculates the contribution of products and processes to global warming—the most prominent environmental challenge of our time.

Because many everyday products are manufactured in quantities numbering in the millions, even seemingly benign products can have enormous downsides for the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soils we cultivate. The Okala guide, notes coauthor Philip White, helps "designers understand the implications of their decisions for the natural environment and, in doing so, the future of human society."

Wendy Jedlicka, CPP - Jedlicka Design Ltd. (www.jedlicka.com); o2 Global Sustainable Design Network (www.o2umw.org); Minneapolis College of Art and Design Sustainable Design Certificate Program (www.online.mcad.edu). Philip White - School of Sustainability, Arizona State University; Ecodesign Section, Industrial Designers Society of America; Orb Analysis for Design (www.orb-design.com).