Better Living Through Sustainability

I'm teaching a class at MICA over the summer—as long as enough people sign up—called “Sustainability for Graphic Designers.” Here is the course #, time and description, as well as a link to MICA's continuing studies registration page. [note: they apparently are calling it sustainable graphic design … but that won't be exactly what I've envisioned the class being about]

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Sustainable Graphic Design (GD214)
3 credits — $1080
Meets 5/21/2010 – 6/25/2010 on Tuesday, Wednesday, & Friday from 12:00 PM to 4:45 PM.

Sustainability is an all-encompassing topic with pragmatic, conceptual, and aesthetic implications to both society and the environment. This course is intended to be an introduction to the various facets of sustainability and how sustainable principles can be applied to design. We will explore current trends, theories and ideologies (ranging from the realistic to the fantastic) along with practical design needs (the fundamentals for specifying more sustainable papers, inks and printing). In covering the basics of sustainability, we will not forget our critical, artistic eye—sustainable design must still be good design.
note: Degree seeking students may take this course in place of Graphic Design I with chair's permission.

learn more &/or register here:
http://bit.ly/cigwVh

My thesis work is now documented and up online at this address: http://graduate.mica.edu/gdmfa/thesis2009/bjornard/index.html

Everything will eventually live on this site, but has simply not yet been uploaded. Bear with me, finishing Grad School and starting life again is hard work.

Environmentalism’s goal was environmental sustainability. Post-environmentalism’s goal must be true sustainability. I propose a new term for the followers of post-environmentalism: Sustainabilitists. We sustainabilitists shall take over where the environmentalists leave off, moving sustainability from the realm of the environment into all realms.

Okay, we gave presentations today as to the direction and progress of our theses as a group of MFA's. In my presentation I touched upon some subjects that I plan on expanding upon. One was the way that the words "GREEN" and "SUSTAINABLE" get used. They are currently used interchangeably, but I plan on outlining in a future essay how I believe they are not equal, and should be adopted differently (green being ditched all together).

When something is called Green or Sustainable it is just a name, just adjectives. A description like green does not make it the right or better solution, it just makes it an alternative. These ideas need to be described in a way that references concrete economic, political, and cultural terms instead of just some new buzzword. We should be focussed on what underlying concepts make something sustainable. Talk about what makes sense, use real world terms, oh and do not mention global warming. We must push progressive reform on design and commerce.