I thought it would be appropriate to open up the new O2UK website by discussing sustainable design itself. What exactly is it?

There are many definitions as well as many different names (eco-design, green design, design for environment, ethical design etc), encompassing a range of environmental, social and financial issues. However, sustainable design is generally accepted as a more broad term that encompasses all of the many aspects of socially and environmentally responsible design. My preferred definition used the one I developed in 2004 for the sustainable design guide www.ESPDesign.org:

“the design of systems that can be sustained indefinitely”

This may seem slightly odd to most designers who do not consider themselves as system designers, but that is exactly what they need to be if they wish to design for sustainability. The reason is that nothing exists in isolation and the sustainability of anything depends much less on what it is than what you do with it. Everything exists within environmental systems, and most things created by humans also exist within social and economic systems, so designers need to understand the context within which they are designing.

For many designers therefore, it might be more useful to think of sustainable design as:

“the design of [products, graphics, technology, buildings etc] that support the sustainability of the systems within which they exist”

Over the last few years another definition of sustainable design has been growing in popularity, with many designers have simply stating that:

“sustainable design is just good design”

As a definition, I feel that this is too vague, but has a good point as a general statement and might be better phrased the other way round as:

“good design is sustainable design”

The statement sets a challenge to the design community by asserting that if you want to be a good designer, then you need to design for sustainability. It’s a simple fact that needs to be acknowledged by the design community if we going to successfully work towards a sustainable future.

The meaning of sustainable design has and always will be a matter of debate, so please join the discussion by commenting on this post or writing an article of your own.

Tom Greenwood is a brand consultant at Scamper Branding and creator of the sustainable design resource www.ESPDesign.org.