If sustainability is the destination, then as designers we need a tool to help get us there.

1. MANY ROUTES
ONE DESTINATION
THE SUSTAINABLE DESIGN COMPASS
© seymourpowell 2013

2. BACKGROUND
CHARTING
A COURSE TO
A SUSTAINABLE
WORLD
If sustainability is the destination, then as
designers we need a tool to help get us there.
This publication, and the work within it, was
sparked by two parallel events. The first of
these were discussions with my Seymourpowell
design colleagues who asked,
‘Chris, this sustainability
stuff seems like everything
and nothing; how do I
know what to focus on,
and how would I know
when I’m doing it right or
not? We need a clear
path or sustainability
roadmap,’ they said.
That really got me thinking: what would
a complete roadmap for the future of
sustainable design look like?
Serendipitously, Seymourpowell started
talking to the Guardian Sustainable
Business team about publishing something
on their excellent blog. They invited us to
write a series of articles that unpack the
issues around sustainability and design. The
following pages feature the seven, separately
published articles on the Guardian’s blog
between September 2012 and February
2013, synthesised into an integrated whole.
But what do the articles cover?
EXPLORING DESIGN FOR
SUSTAINABILITY
The need for business and society to move
to a more sustainable future is increasingly
clear and accepted; the role of design within
this transition is not. The articles explore
the various ways designers can contribute
to, and help build a sustainable future. The
series was partly inspired by my frustration
that the design community has been slow to
the sustainability table, taking time to realise
the huge responsibilities and opportunities
available. But I’m also optimistic that, with
a bit of help and direction, designers will
be inspired and do the right thing.
FROM ROADMAP TO COMPASS
Rather than looking at a specific challenge,
like integrating lifecycle assessment into
design, or a specific method, like cradleto-cradle, I was eager for the article series
to explore and celebrate the many faces
of sustainable design. That’s where the idea
of a roadmap with various routes came in.
Between then and now I became strangely
uncomfortable with the ‘roadmap’ metaphor
used in the Guardian series. It felt too
mechanistic, unidirectional, just too connected
to the car industry! So I’ve reinvented our
model as a Compass – helping the design
community find a better, more sustainable
pathway.
USING THIS REPORT
Over the following pages, the Sustainable
Design Compass will map out a sustainability
route that works for you, your context, your
strengths and skills. It presents a series of
discreet pathways designers can follow on
sustainability. These can work for individual
designers and the wider design community
too.
So pick up the compass and let’s get started,
as we chart a course to sustainability.
CHRIS SHERWIN
Head of Sustainability, Seymourpowell
This booklet is based on a series of articles originally
published by the Guardian Sustainable Business blog.

4. EXISTING
DIRECTIONAL AXIS:
The two main tensions across
which design operates
KEY QUADRANTS:
EXISTING
CROSS-CUTTING THEMES:
The way design processes
must change across all quadrants
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5. THE MODEL
OUR COMPASS
The Sustainable Design Compass provides
designers with a strategic tool to re-orientate
themselves from our current wasteful, unjust,
unsustainable developmental path; towards
a fairer, more meaningful world that operates
within the limits of the planet. Think of it as
a mid-course correction for design.
THE COMPASS IN SUMMARY
The Compass shows how the sustainability
movement can get more out of design, plus
the main areas and ways that design needs
to step up on sustainability. The pages that
follow unpack the Compass, covering each
sustainable design ‘route’ in more detail.
But first we will introduce the Compass
itself and explain how it works:
The Sustainable Design Compass consists
of North/South (X) and East/West (Y) axes,
each representing the two main tensions
across which design operates:
TECHNOLOGY VS. SOCIETAL DRIVERS:
in which design is led more by new
technology or by user needs and
behaviours.
EXISTING VS. NEW STUFF:
in which designers make small
changes or big, breakthrough leaps
through their projects.
The resulting four quadrants present
different routes or pathways in which
design can build a sustainable future,
which are:
1. SUSTAINABILITY IN ALL DESIGN:
in which sustainability is integrated as
a factor in all projects and briefs, simply
becoming part of what constitutes
good design.
2. CLEANTECH BY DESIGN:
in which design is used to help humanise
and commercialise new green and clean
technologies, so that they succeed.
3. DESIGN FOR
SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIOURS:
where designers make sustainable
behaviours and actions easier and more
desirable for people.
4. SOCIAL INNOVATION:
where design is driven by the ‘real’
needs of people and the planet.
Two further themes cut-across our four
quadrants, covering the ways in which
the design process needs to change.
These can work with each thematic
quadrant or as a stand-alone, and are:
5. NEW DESIGN MODELS:
in which design embraces the new
skills and working practices required
for sustainability.
6. CREATING DESIGN VISIONS:
where designers create inspiring and
imaginative future visions of how the
world can be better through sustainability.
So six distinctive, but different sustainable
design routes, mapped out in the following
pages. Before using our Compass to
identify the best route for you, let’s orientate
ourselves a little, by looking at where we’ve
come from and how we got here. The next
section begins by asking why ‘design’ for
sustainability?

6. INTRODUCTION
SUSTAINABILITY
- THE ULTIMATE
DESIGN BRIEF
We begin by looking at the background and
context to sustainable design, arguing that design
will be key to the next wave of sustainability.
‘There are professions
more harmful than design’,
wrote the godfather
of sustainable design,
Victor Papanek in 1972,
‘but only a few’.
He accused designers of creating
useless, unnecessary and unsafe
products; of wastefully propagating
product obsolescence; of creating ‘stufflust’ to promote materialistic lifestyles.
Glimpse at the pages of most mainstream
design mag’s or websites today, one
wonders how much has really changed.
Are the objects of desire emerging from
these pages destined to bulge our
landfills or secure our future?
DESIGN MATTERS
The material world with which we surround
ourselves - the signs that direct you, the
smartphone pages you flick, the way you
use buildings, how you move around cities
– is consciously or unconsciously designed.
Sometimes well, but frequently not. There
are sustainability implications to this too.
The Department for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) estimates that
75% of UK consumers’ carbon emissions
come from the products and services
they use.
We also know that 80% of the environmental
impacts of those products and services
are determined at the early design stages.
These two figures tell us that sustainability
is chiefly about ‘stuff’ - about the purchase
and use of goods and services as part of
consumerist lifestyles, and that the impacts
of those products or services are pretty much
‘designed-in’ (or ‘out’ for that matter) from
the very outset – making them predominantly
questions of design.
So design really does matter, not only in how
we shape and order our world, but also in
determining the main sustainability impacts
on our lives. That’s even truer for industrial
and product designers as they design those
products and services we use and consume.
We’ve made some serious headway on
sustainability reporting and monitoring,
governance, production, supply chains,
communications, but paid much less
attention (and budget) to how we design
more sustainable products, services and
systems. One probable reason for this is,
beyond a few notable individuals, a lack of
leading voices on sustainable design
as part of the broader debate.
Though design may be guilty of past
malpractice (who wasn’t?), there’s a
growing sense that in the next wave
of sustainability, focussed on creativity,
entrepreneurship, innovation and practical
solutions, design skills will feature heavily
in our toolkit. Californian design professor,
and Papanek progeny, Nathan Shedroff
captures this well in saying,
‘Design is the problem
as well as the solution’.
If environmentalism’s success was in
spotlighting sustainability problems to
the world, the success of design will
be in helping deliver solutions.
WHY ‘DESIGN’ FOR SUSTAINABILITY
It may be fair to ask how much
designers have earned the right to play
in the sustainability space if they lack
sustainability leadership. Yet there are
positive signs of change: from the take-up
of design methods like Cradle-to-Cradle
and biomimicry, through to industry ‘design’
collaborations like the Sustainable Apparel
Coalition. From the many thousands of
designers voluntarily signing the Designers
Accord sustainability principles, to celebrity
designers like Philippe Starck, Wayne
Hemingway and Yves Behar pinning
their colours to the sustainability mast.
Why, you may also ask, should you turn
to a designer, rather than a supply chain,
factory manager, comms/ad agency or
technologist? Great design makes the
heart beat faster, solves tricky problems
creatively, makes weird, new stuff seem
normal, makes things cool, can make lives
better, and make businesses richer. Steve
Jobs understood this intuitively in stating,

7. ‘Design is the
fundamental soul of the
human-made creation’,
and great design helped Apple become the
wealthiest company there is to date.
We now need to take design way beyond
what Apple has done with it and turn its
skills wholeheartedly and single-mindedly
to the challenges of sustainability. We need
people saying ‘ooh’, ‘wow’, ‘ah ha’, and ‘oh
yeah’ to really great sustainable design.
Reading Papanek’s Design for the
Real World as a young design student
convinced me that sustainable design
was the only route for me, and I’ve
worked in the field ever since. I’m hoping
our Compass and booklet triggers two
critical things amongst the sustainability
and design communities:
Firstly, that clients and the sustainability
movement will turn more to designers on
sustainability problems and their solutions.
Secondly, that the design community can
move beyond the image of being stylists
and fashionistas, to step up and see
sustainability as the ultimate design
brief it really is.
So that’s where we’ve come from and
where we now are on sustainability and
design, but where should we be going?
The next sections unpick the various
different routes for sustainable designers.

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HOZELOCK GROWBAG:
This Growbag concept for
Hozelock makes watering your
plants easier, increases crop
yield by 50% and reduces
water use. A real win-win-win.
NS
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The brief provides the rules to work to and
then check your designs against at the end,
while the designer’s job is to balance these
technical, commercial, brand and customer
parameters. You can exceed the brief, but
certainly never under deliver. So if this is the
all-powerful blueprint for successful design,
why not embed sustainability in it to ensure
it happens systematically?
Here lies the first challenge of our
compass for sustainable design - getting
sustainability into the design process, so
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Next we map a series of sustainable design routes
for you. The first of these promotes the integration
of sustainability into each and every design project.
Here’s how the majority of design
projects work. A client writes a brief,
clearly laying out a set of requirements
for the project they are commissioning.
This brief can contain: customer needs
and profile, technical specifications, price
and cost boundaries and manufacturing
recommendations, in other words all the
essential ingredients of a successful
design.
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EMBEDDING
SUSTAINABILITY
IN ALL DESIGN
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ROUTE 1
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EXISTING
it is part of the normal way we design,
whether through briefing or some other
mechanism. The good news is that, in
our experiences, sustainability is coming
through now in client briefs. The bad news?
It’s not in all briefs and as of yet is not a
default consideration in design. Just 14%
of designers say that green issues were
an important factor in them winning or
delivering work for clients.1
SUSTAINABILITY IS JUST GOOD DESIGN
‘Good design is sustainable design’
announced the UK Design Council’s
strategic plan in 2008, but I believe we
must go one step further, not only making
sustainability part of good design, but of all
design. Mike Barry from M&S echoes this
in targeting sustainability in ‘every product’
the retailer sells.
In the Introduction, I explained how
designers’ shape the next generation
of products and services so critical to
the sustainability of the UK economy.
Factoring social and environmental
considerations into the design of future

9. KT:
Good design with
sustainability built-in. Our
KT packaging design can
be reused as a cable-tidy
under their desk. Less
waste, more useful.
products can ensure we hit our longterm targets for carbon emissions,
resource efficiency, waste reduction,
and reduced toxicity. Historically, we’ve
targeted specific ‘sustainable’ products
within a portfolio (an eco-range), or high
impact products (the areas of DEFRA’s
Product Roadmaps)2. This only spotlights
contradiction in a company’s portfolio (why
design sustainable products next to their
‘unsustainable’ counterparts?) or risks
impacts reduced in one product category
being cancelled out by spiralling impacts in
another. The goal must be sustainability in
100% of design.
you are in briefing (issues, targets), the
better the results will be, and clients need
to get much better at this.
Many advocate lifecycle assessment (LCA)
or other product footprinting as an essential
or mandatory part of design3, which
companies such as Levis, Danone or Kraft
reportedly do. While in principle this may
be effective, a broader set of sustainable
design tools may be needed.
Given that the dynamics of power rest
Case studies help explain this. One such
with clients, industry programs and design
example would be our very own KT (Korea IN DESIGN PROCESSES:
standards can help, such as WRAP’s
Individual products or projects are usually
Telecom) packaging design, primarily
excellent Product Sustainability Forum5,
designed for the user benefit of reusing the part of a strategic portfolio, which is
looking to unify the way we design
carefully managed and can be another
packaging as an electrical product ‘cableproducts across different industries.
tidy’, which also has environmental benefits point of influence. Companies such as
4
DSM , which aims for 80% of its pipeline
of packaging and material reuse. Another
NEXT GENERATION DESIGN
from sustainable product by 2015, IKEA,
is Replenish, the household-cleaning refill
All this may sound like good housekeeping,
with its goal of 90% of eco-improved
which saves you money and reduces the
rather than the imaginative, creative,
products by 2015, and M&S with all
inconvenience of running out, as well as
inspirational processes normally associated
products to have a Plan A quality by 2020, with design. But if it’s not glamorous, it can
being greener.
are building sustainability systematically
certainly be effective. In future, it is my view
SUSTAINABILITY IN 100% OF DESIGN
into design. If targets are set to move the
that doing design without sustainability
If sustainability in all design is the goal,
portfolio towards sustainability, the projects being, at the very least, a consideration in
then the client-designer relationship will
and products will follow.
the brief or process, will be as inexcusable
be crucial to delivering this. Here are three
as designing dangerous or unsafe products
THROUGH DESIGN PERSUASION OR
ways to make sustainability a default in
is today.
STEALTH:
design:
Avoiding sustainable design considerations
Designers cannot control briefs or what
IN DESIGN BRIEFS:
clients do, but they can influence. That kind now can also mean building-in future
environmental or social risks for the very
Getting the briefing process right is an
of creative disruption is often why clients
clients that designers are serving, or even
obvious first step. We’ve seen sustainability turn to designers – because they think
written into briefs in such unspecific ways
differently, stretching the client and the brief for the next generation of users. That really
would be ‘off-brief’ and the exact opposite
as to be of little use. This risks it being side- beyond what they see today. Why not on
of the added value service that clients have
lined or dropped off the priority list, which
sustainability – either through persuasion
come to expect from good design.
I’ve also seen happen. The more specific
or stealth?

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A few years back, green start-up
Intelligent Energy (IE), the proud owners
and developers of a world-class hydrogen
fuel cell, faced a real challenge. The world
was proving slow to grasp the potential
of their technology, so they turned to an
unusual source for help. Instead of asking
an adman or management consultant,
‘What’s the best way to sell our cell?’
IE turned to Seymourpowell for an answer.
Over the following years, IE worked
with us to produce a compelling product
application for their clean technology
that would engage mass customers and
business partners. The resulting ENV bike6
was the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell
powered motorcycle - sleek, elegant and
emitting nothing but pure water vapour.
More importantly, this helped IE licence
the technology to Suzuki, then later to
other customers, with fuel-cell scooters
due on the market imminently7.
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This route makes the case
for using design to help clean
and green technologies
succeed.
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make a new clean technology attractive to
funders and investors, as well as for users
and consumers: the two main audiences
we need to win over in future.
HUMANISING CLEAN TECHNOLOGY
The International Council of Societies
for Industrial Design (ICSID) describe
design as the ‘innovative humanisation
of technologies’8, suggesting an
important role in making new technology
understandable and usable. Cleantech
itself has a reputation of being ‘techie’
and impenetrable, with green guru John
Elkington commenting, ‘One of the
missing links in this area, is the connection
to consumers’9.
This growth-threatening gap in the cleantech
story, around humanising the technology,
is what design can help fill. This is about
more than just consumers; it’s about
connecting cleantech to people, which
investors and B2B customers are too.
This case highlights the second key
Operating as a bridge between technology
way design can help build a sustainable
and people, between production and
future – by helping cleantech succeed
consumption, designers are especially good
and scale-up. Great design helped IE
at turning basic kit into winning products
turn a raw technology into a useful and
and meaningful solutions. They may not
understandable product concept. It created invent the technology, but designers can
something really new, imaginative and
make sense of it and make it mainstream.
exciting that catches the eye. It helped
The most everyday of clean technologies,
the Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL),
illustrates this well. Consumers rejected
these energy efficient alternatives, not just
due to additional expense, but also because
the new curly-bulb shape stuck out of their
lamps. CFL design today largely mirrors the
incandescent bulbs they aim to replace.
OBJECTS OF DESIRE FOR
CLEANTECH INVESTMENT
One wonders how much design could help
high-potential companies in the Guardian’s
own Cleantech 10010. All these inspiring,
early-stage tech companies are jostling for
position in the race for scarce funding and
resources. They will need to compete within
and across sectors.
One cleantech investor once told me, ‘If
you are an investor you see maybe 200-300
companies a year and invest in only three
or four. It is about getting across immediately
why them, why the technology, why the
management team.’ Being incredibly clear
on the commercial proposition at those
early stages is life critical. Yes, that’s the
business plan, great management team, a
proven technology, but great design could
give a cleantech company the edge. The
economic case for design in business is
well proven11 as high growth start-ups are

11. more likely to embrace design, while shares design of the soon-to-be-launched Tesla
in design-led business outperform the FTSE Model S electric-powered family sedan13.
100 by 200% over the last few years.
Even renewable micro-generation can
benefit from great design. How much
GREEN TECHNOLOGY,
of Quiet Revolution’s14 success is down
GREAT DESIGN
to the effectiveness of their turbines in
When cleantech by design works properly, comparison to their great design and
the results can be amazing. One current
branding? While Solar Century’s C21
favourite, spotlighted in the Cleantech
integrated solar tile design15 means you
100 is NEST, the learning thermostat12.
avoid lengthy planning applications for
It’s smart, beautiful and cool to use. You
roof installation.
program it to meet your daily energy needs,
then it learns and adapts to your behaviour, DESIGNING FOR
even switching off when you’re away.
CLEANTECH SUCCESS
I’m not saying design is a substitute for other
The Automotive sector uses design
ingredients essential for scaling up cleantech:
well to mainstream its clean and green
such as the right financing structures, an
technologies. The success of the
injection of investment, favourable policy
breakthrough second generation Toyota
signals, or better green public procurement.
Prius was attributed as much to design,
But design can help cleantech in the same
which simply made the hybrid vehicle
ways it did with the digital technology
‘normal’, as to any technological factor.
revolution at the turn of the millennium.
Tesla gets this intuitively too, via the sleek
Don’t forget that an iPod is little more than
a wearable hard-drive with great branding,
product design and user interface.
From a broader view, cleantech is perhaps
the most exciting tech revolution of the
21st Century and our future survival,
economically and environmentally, may
rest heavily on these new green and clean
technologies. That is exactly the sort of
challenge and opportunity the design
community should get behind.
At the moment though, I don’t see the
cleantech sector turning to designers en
masse; or see the design industry getting
behind cleantech in anything like the way
they should, which is a missed opportunity
both ways.

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BIMBO:
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Our Bimbo packaging design
eliminates the useless and wasteful
cable-tie, allowing consumers to
knot the packaging itself, keeping
bread fresher for longer.
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SUSTAINABLE
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BY DESIGN
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Bread is among the top wasted
product in many European markets,
so this simple act can save money
and the environment too.
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This route makes the case for using
design as part of our sustainable
behaviour toolkit.
EXISTING
If you’re reading this over morning coffee or
afternoon tea, chances are you’ll have put
the kettle on. Putting aside the sustainability
impacts of coffee, tea, milk or sugar
sourcing, or the social value, conviviality
and cultural importance of these rituals,
which any eco-literate audience will likely
know; the humble kettle itself encapsulates
many of the central sustainability challenges
around behaviour change and consumer
engagement. In this route, we will use the
kettle to unpack the third important area
for sustainability and design: creating
sustainable behaviour.
‘COOL’ KETTLES
The seemingly trivial kettle has been
estimated to account for 4% of UK
household carbon emissions.16 Simple
changes to its design could have a
potentially huge effect. The largest impact
from kettles is the energy consumed when
boiling water (95%). This is made worse
by inefficient behaviour like over-filling and
furring of the element by hard water.
On top of that, people actually boil their
kettle on average 2.4 times for a single
cup, switching on then getting distracted
by Eastenders/footie/phone call. They then
re-boil as they think the water is not hot
enough. Amazingly, studies show that the
single biggest innovation to tackle usage
and behaviour inadequacies would be the
good-old whistle. Removing whistles in the
move from gas hob-top to electric countertop kettles instantly eliminated the audible
prompt that it was time for tea. The main
variables to influence a kettle’s impacts
are therefore behavioural, not technical.
MOVING BEYOND THE MESSAGE
Most of the written word on sustainable
behaviour, seen extensively on the pages
of major media platforms, is characterised
by what I call a communications-driven
approach. This uses education, awarenessraising, campaigns - essentially messaging
- to change minds, capture hearts and shift
behaviour, via tools like advertising, PR and
social media. So how about a ‘turn off the
switch’ campaign for our case above? I’m
not entirely convinced we can communicate
our way out of trouble in this way.
This approach relies heavily on getting
the message right, for which I have two
concerns. First, this can be tricky given that
messages will compete with the estimated
3000+ ‘buy-more, use-me, new-andimproved, limited edition’ mainstream
marketing messages North Americans are
said to receive daily.17 Secondly, many
mainstream consumer segments are simply
too busy to succumb to even sophisticated
sustainability messages, and there are already
calls to move beyond clever slogans.18
Green guru Jonathon Porritt concurs, saying,
‘I seriously doubt consumer’s ability to choose

13. TEFAL CORDLESS KETTLE:
World firsts: Our cordless kettle for
Tefal changed category rules many
years ago, but it also had safer
consumer behaviour designed-in.
Kettle-related accidents went down
50% in the UK in the years following
its launch.
That means 4000 less burned
children every year.
their way out of trouble. They will need
some help!’ I’m convinced we can really
‘help’ consumer’s by using design more for
sustainable behaviours, building behaviour
change into the solutions themselves.
Like their marketing and communications
cousins, designers are particularly skilled
at influencing behaviour, not in a sinister
‘social engineering’ sense, but usually for
better experiences or for the commercial
goals of selling more. We must now turn all
those powers of design persuasion to
sustainable behaviours.
RETURNING TO OUR KETTLE
Back to kettles - these and many other
product impacts can be changed, reduced
or even eliminated by smart design. The
common problem of over-filling for a single
cup, can and is being tackled through waterlevel indicators or windows.19 Integrated
filters can purify water when filling, to avoid
element furring. Re-boiling is being tackled
by adding a temperature gauge light (water
only needs to be 90°, not 100° for tea or
coffee) to indicate it is still hot enough to use20.
There is a growing and positive trend for
adding whistles in modern kettle design,21
hopefully for both style AND sustainability
reasons. So you could ask people to switch
off, but a far better option is to build-in the
behaviour change and consumers will do
it naturally.
DESIGNING MORE
SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIOUR
Look around and there is almost no limit
or scale to which sustainable behaviour
by design can be applied. From battery
‘powercheck’ testing strips22 to
indicate the charge, which extend battery
life by up to 40% and avoid their unnecessary
- and potentially toxic - disposal; to the
pavement-less street design around South
Kensington’s museums, that counter-
intuitively slows traffic and increases
pedestrian safety.23 From the infamous flytattooed urinals24 in Schipol Airport that ‘nudge’
male users to reduce spillage by 80%; to
Roca’s intelligent plug design25 which feeds
back the litres of water draining out of your
sink. Here design provides people with
solutions or behaviours that are simply better,
not just greener.
In case you’re thinking, ‘oh that’s just product
design’, I’ve already argued why design and
products really matter as part of UK consumer’s
carbon emissions and we ignore them at our
peril. Adding behaviour change by design to
our toolkit would therefore make sustainable
behaviour not just easier and more automatic,
but ultimately more exciting and aspirational
for consumers too.

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SOCIAL INNOVATION
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What does a football;
clothing for female
medical patients; and a
condom pack have in
common?
They are all shortlisted for the 2013 Index
Awards26 for ‘Design to Improve Life’.
Secondly, they all provide great examples
for our next route on sustainability and
design: how designers are creating real,
practical solutions to some of the world’s
many social and environmental challenges
– through social innovation by design.
The bi-annual Index Awards are one of my
favourite sustainability initiatives, and also
I believe one of the most important. Aiming
‘to use design skills to develop sustainable
solutions to global and local challenges’, it
features a collection of some of the most
inspiring examples of social innovation you
will find in one place.
For example, the One World Futbol27
project is promoting a new ball design,
which never needs inflating, will rarely
puncture, is guaranteed child labour-free in
its manufacture, and is sold using a ‘buyone, give-one-to-developing countries’
model to send equipment to places where
a football can create hope and build
communities.
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This route makes the case for
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There are many more examples, but it’s
also important to note that Index is the
single biggest design prize anywhere in
the industry (€500k in prizes awarded)
– showing a growing recognition and
investment in social innovation.
SOCIAL INNOVATION MEETS DESIGN
Put simply, social innovations are ideas
that work for the public good30. It will not
be a new term to a sustainability literate
audience, but designer’s involvement in it
might be.
Rather than design focussing solely on
heating up the economy so it grows,
drives consumption and stimulates sales;
this is design and innovation focussed on
society’s most important challenges and
problems: climate change, access to clean
water, better sanitation, pollution, poverty
or malnutrition, female empowerment,
crime and so on.
gravitate toward the social, rather than
environmental problems of sustainability,
as it’s a natural fit for their skills requiring
no retraining.
BRINGING SOCIAL INNOVATION TO LIFE
Great examples of social innovation are
abounding. The Watercone project allows
the poor to simply purify drinking water in
a day. The design of unbreakable
glassware31 for UK pubs helps reduce
alcohol related accidents and injuries
and design-out crime. The inspirational
One Laptop Per Child project32 would
not be what it is today without the design
consultancy fuseproject’s work on the
product itself.
Moving from product to the organisational
levels of design, IDEO now have a not-forprofit arm33 to work directly and systematically
with NGO’s, social enterprises and foundations
to apply design directly to social problems.
While Frog Design recently launched a free
Whether for- or non-profit, it’s a different
design toolkit for social innovation34, for
role for design in not being solely driven by
charities or social entrepreneurs to learn
commercial needs, but by social impact, and
for themselves, then apply in situ. You can
in genuinely creating a better world for people
even get a Masters in ‘Design for Social
or the planet. Same process: different goal.
Innovation’35.
WHY ‘DESIGN’ FOR SOCIAL IMPACT?
I don’t believe designers have a monopoly
over social innovation and don’t need to
be involved for its success. But designers
do have an important skill-set to apply to
social innovation – namely an empathic
approach to their solutions. Unlike their
engineering cousins working extensively
The one-handed condom wrapper design28
from technology or science, designers start
provides contraception without those
from people. Historically termed empathic,
awkward, embarrassing and doubt-creating
user, human, or people-centred design, it’s
moments of fumbling – to promote dignity,
been interesting to hear recent calls for an
empowerment and build confidence.
overhaul of terminology within the design
The blouse design29 replaces standard
industry, from ‘human-centred design’ to
issue hospital robes to provide better
‘humanity-centred design’, which does
wearability, access, comfort and
rather hit the spot.
self-worth for breast cancer patients
This methodological orientation explains
throughout radiology treatment, in their
why, in my opinion, designers tend to
time of greatest need.
Social innovators themselves do seem to
be seeing the value of design, as I recently
spotted ‘redesign’ described among the ‘10
Steps to Transform Capitalism for the Better’36
by two leading commentators. This all goes
to show the design world is waking up to its
social responsibilities too. Many years ago,
the godfather of sustainable design, Victor
Papanek called for designers to donate 10%
of their time to exactly these sort of ‘projects
for the greater good’, and while I don’t think
we’re quite there yet, there are promising
signs of a new and exciting approach to
world-changing design.
Photograph of One World Futbol in Santa
Tecla, El Salvador.
Credit: Nicholas Hammond

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SUSTAINABLE
DESIGN 2.0
New models and methods are needed
to ensure design is fit-for-the-purpose
of delivering a sustainable future.
Working in the field of sustainable design,
I’m periodically asked, sometimes challenged,
on what a truly sustainable product looks
like. I thought I’d share the way I tackle
this as a way to unpack the issues.
One example I use is the work of designer
Chris Cattle, who ‘grows furniture’. His
amazing designs consist of three timber
saplings that are planted, grown and trained
around a reusable plywood template to
produce, in time, a rigid structure for pieces
of furniture like tables and stools. Grafting
the saplings together when thick enough
creates their joints, and then after two
years the structure can be cut and used
with minimal finishing other than additions
like a seat or table top, as with the
example opposite.
The only energy used to make the structures
is that directly from the sun. In addition, the
furniture is almost completely renewable
and biodegradable, as well as being durable
and long lasting. It creates little or none of
the pollution created in ‘normal’ furniture
making such as VOC’s from glue or foam,
or the toxic effluents from fabric dying.
If sourced from a well-managed forest, it
can be grown carbon neutrally, enhancing
biodiversity and supporting the skills and
development of local economies. Imagine
planting and growing ‘furniture forests’ of
components or even complete structures.
It’s hard to think of a more sustainable way
to produce furniture.
Whether you like the product or not,
you’ll have to admit that it’s really different.
In furniture production terms, it substitutes
‘cutting and hacking’ timber through oldfashioned and wasteful industrial processes,
for ‘gently persuading it’. It’s more topiary,
gardening or horticulture than 20th century
manufacturing or industrial design.
It perfectly illustrates the next point in our
sustainable design series, how designers
need to adopt different methods and
models of design, to adapt to and deliver
a sustainable future.
SHIFTING DESIGN PARADIGMS
Two of the most prominent of these new
design models are Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C)
and Biomimicry design. Cradle-to-Cradle37
design consists of seeing products as
either technical or biological nutrients to be
designed back into their appropriate cycle.
The Caterpillar’s Reman38 program, which
refurbishes used trucks and reuses their
components, is C2C design in action.
Biomimicry39, the other new model, is where
natural processes, honed over 3 billion years
of biological evolution are the inspiration
for design. If you’re facing a design problem,
why not wonder at how nature would do it
HISTORY OF DESIGN
via examples from the extensive website
Our understanding of design today was
forged in the early years of the 20th century ‘Ask Nature’?40 Grown furniture probably fits a
model called ‘Ecological Design’41 - which works
and has always reflected the social and
by ‘integrating itself with living processes.’
economic priorities of its time. In the early
days, this was a willingness to embrace
Much of these new models question currently
mass production and emerging forms of
perceived design education – particularly in
consumer capitalism. Looking back, it’s
embracing broader ecological systems. So
easy to wonder how much design practice
will future sustainability-literate designers
has really changed over the years, certainly
come from the art and design school model
in the way we teach it.
derived from those early 20th Century years?
Or do examples such as the Biomimicry for
The seismic, if slow, shifts towards
Creative Innovation group, offering design
sustainability are beginning to change
this. Business, technological and economic training with Kew Royal Botanical Gardens
paradigms are softening, flattening, opening, experts, give a snapshot of a future in which
and becoming more circular, as we transition great design education comes from
somewhere like a biology department?
to the ecological and biological models of
sustainability. Little surprise then to see
this reflected in new design practice.
Different times call for different means.

17. SUSTAINABLE DESIGN GETS UGLY
In a sustainable future, one thing design
will continue to do is beautify the everyday
and make new things normal, and it is here
where our grown furniture example may fall
down today. Though beauty is very much in
the eye of the beholder, even I don’t expect
this to win many traditional design awards
or float everyone’s boat, just yet.
Do remember though that these are first
prototypes, which take time to produce, and
which need and allow further refinement and
development. Also remember that really new
things often challenge us in quite fundamental
ways, in what’s known as the ‘shock of the
new’. Ironically, it’s usually a designers’ job
to make the new more palatable, taking new
technology and dressing it up in familiar
shapes, forms and behaviours.
It’s not yet clear if the future lies in redesigning
sustainable products in this way, to make
them normal, or in redesigning design itself.
One thing more certain is that the use, and
the need for new models of design like
those outlined above will just keep growing.
Photograph Credit: Christopher Cattle

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USING DESIGN
VISIONS TO ADVANCE
SUSTAINABILITY
Our final route argues that designers should
create more imaginative visions of sustainability
that excite rather than depress or scare people.
Author Malcolm Gladwell said, ‘The
visionary starts with a blank sheet of paper
and re-imagines the world’. So imagine
this: you could travel internationally, without
the hassle and stress of the airport, or the
carbon emissions and climate impacts
currently associated with flying. Imagine
a more serene transport experience for
people looking for a more reflective journey,
where the experience of travel itself is more
important than getting from A to B quickly.
final point in our sustainability and design
route - how designers can create inspiring
visions of the future that help advance
sustainability.
WHY DESIGN VISIONS?
The use of visions will not be new to the
sustainability world, but design-driven
visions might be. Whilst sustainability
theoretically fits neatly with concepts like
futurity, legacy or long-term thinking, one
problem that Forum for the Future’s Peter
Madden notes is that, ‘Our main narrative
is fundamentally overwhelmingly negative
– apocalyptic, doom and gloom. It’s antigrowth. But it stops us being listened to,
and acts as a barrier to the majority of
people.43’ We have not painted particularly
inspiring pictures of how sustainable living
can be better for people.
Imagine a world cruise not on the ocean,
but in a giant, zeppelin-like hotel in the
sky from which you have time to marvel
at natural or manmade wonders. Your trip
to New York or Dubai would take a couple
of days during which you’re enjoying the
absolute freedom of flight, with family or
friends. Imagine all this being powered, in
elevation and direction, only by hydrogen,
topped up by solar panels covering the vast ‘Designers don’t just see the world as
it is, they see how it could be44’, states
structure.
Sustainable Design Professor, Cameron
Imagine no more as this is the Aircruise
Tonkinwise. Talk to a designer and they
concept42 Seymourpowell created and
don’t focus on what’s wrong or what’s
visualised a few years back. You may
broken, invariably they’ll want to fix it or
even be able to try it soon, as Korean
make it better.
conglomerate Samsung bought and is
investigating the feasibility of our concept. As creatives, designers are ideas people,
able to imagine new ways of doing things.
This vision is not intended to be a ‘haveCritically they can bring these ideas to life
your-consumerist-cake-and-eat-it’
by visualising them in inspiring ways, and
scenario, or even a prediction of how things also by presenting ideas and visions from
will end up. This is a re-imagining of how
the end-user/citizen/consumer backwards
things could be - an alternative take on
– meaning they are about people not
future leisure and travel, in which ‘slow
technology.
is the new fast’. It perfectly illustrates the
VISIONS IN ACTION
Look around and you’ll find more than
the odd designer working on visions for
a sustainable world. The Siemens ‘Future
Life’ film45 at The Crystal installation in
London in early 2013 caught my eye
through its explanation of how tomorrow’s
sustainable city dwelling can be healthy,
communal, beneficial and fun. Picking
fruit and veg from your New York city
sky-scraper’s urban vertical farms, or
bathing in the outdoor communal pools of
Copenhagen’s Harbour look particularly
appealing.
Some of the best visions of this kind
come from Philips Design, via their Design
Futures program.46 The company even
has a formal methodology for this process
titled ‘Design Probes’, which looks at farfuture lifestyle scenarios, which culminate
in a design provocation.47 One of my
personal favourites is their ‘Home Farming’
concept48 to grow some of your food inside
your home. A domestic mini-ecosystem,
containing fish, crustaceans, algae and
edible plants, all interdependent and in
balance with each other, provides your very
own in-door vertical farm.
THE POINT OF DESIGN VISIONS?
Cynics may see this as just whimsy or
creative indulgence, yet our original
Aircruise concept film has over 650,000
YouTube views to date, and though impact
shouldn’t be measured by clicks alone, part
of this is clearly about some much needed
sustainability inspiration.

19. One of our own philosophies is that
innovation is best delivered if you ‘step into
the future and drag the present towards
you,’ so we use these kinds of visions
in our everyday work. Our refill concept
- called Boomerang49 - was created for
personal care products like shampoo or
bodywash, and has helped us talk to our
consumer brand clients about design
beyond single use, disposable products.
Any resulting designs may not be an exact
extrapolation of the vision, but it does show
another role for visions in being ‘catalytic’.
A while back, Philips Design published
some of its former visionary concepts,
presented next to similar products they may
have catalysed, that had been introduced
to the market since. Ironically, many of
these were not developed or launched by
Philips, so vision projects can be a wider
stimulus for innovation too. So the visionary
may start with a blank sheet and re-imagine
the world, but designers can help with that
extra step of making these visions a reality.
Our Compass has uncovered many
routes for sustainability and design, in
which designers must: add sustainability
to everything designed, help cleantech
to scale up and win, redesign people’s
behaviour, even take on some of the worlds
big challenges – through design. Yet this
final route presents the ultimate role, and
challenge, to designers – bringing inspiring
visions of sustainability to life.

21. CONCLUSION
DESTINATION
SUSTAINABILITY
Use our compass, explore its routes,
be a pioneer.
Our Sustainable Design Compass provides a complete, comprehensive
series of route maps for design to re-orientate itself for sustainability. None
of the routes are more right or wrong, and I see little value in putting them
in a hierarchy. Designing for sustainability can often seem so grand and allencompassing, so large and scary, as to be almost paralysing. The Compass
provides a strategic and personal tool to help designers navigate a route for
themselves. So all routes have a value, it’s just about what you can achieve
from where you are.
You may recall this booklet being catalysed by our design team asking how
they would know if they are doing sustainable design or not. Well I now reply,
‘If it fits on the Compass, you’re doing sustainable design, if it doesn’t, you’re
not.’
BECOME A 21ST CENTURY DESIGN PIONEER
Yet the Sustainable Design Compass is both a tool and a call to action. With
increasing pressures on the earths resources, the need for new thinking,
better ideas, creativity and innovation are greater than ever. In the past,
design was instrumental in creating sustainability problems, but tomorrow’s
successful designers and innovators will be part of the solution. Far from
constraining great design, sustainability offers a fantastic set of levers around
which we can rethink and redesign our ways of living and working.
The real pioneers get to reinvent the world;
what a creative opportunity!
This really is a once in a lifetime opportunity too good to pass up.
The Sustainable Design Compass is your tool for the practical task of building
a better world. It falls to this generation of designers to imagine a world we’d
all like to live in for the long-term, and then make those visions a reality.
If you would like to discuss how this impacts your business, product and
service design, do reach out to us.
CONNECT WITH CHRIS AT:
chris.sherwin@seymourpowell.com
+44(0) 7381 6433
@seymourpowell
@sherwinnovator

22. REFERENCES
WHERE TO FIND
MORE DETAILS
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/Documents/Documents/
Publications/Research/DesignIndustryResearch2010/
DesignIndustryInsights2010_Design_Council.pdf
1
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/economy/productsconsumers/
2
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/life-cycleassessment-sustainability
3
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/productsservices-sustainable-business-strategy?INTCMP=SRCH
4
5
http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/product-sustainability-forum
24
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/u/urinal.htm
http://media.designerpages.com/3rings/2011/04/14/rocasintelligent-drain-is-smart-about-water-usage/
25
26
http://www.designtoimprovelife.dk/
27
http://www.oneworldfutbol.com/
http://nominateforindexaward.dk/Presentation/read/
id=MTgyNA==
28
29
http://www.jillies.com/
30
http://socialinnovation.ca/about
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/gallery/
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/Security/
sustainable-product-design-in-pictures?intcmp=239#/?picture=39 Design-out-crime/Alcohol-related-crime/Alcohol-related-crime1/
6261132&index=2
32
http://one.laptop.org/
7
http://www.gizmag.com/suzuki-ev-scooter/21380/
33
https://www.ideo.org/
8
http://www.icsid.org/about/about/articles31.htm
34
http://www.frogdesign.com/collective-action-toolkit
9
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zeronauts-Breaking-Sustainability35
http://dsi.sva.edu/
Barrier/dp/1849713979
6
31
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/globalcleantech-100-list-2012
36
10
11
http://www.designfactfinder.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/gallery/
sustainable-product-design-in-pictures#/?picture=396261014&in
dex=1
12
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680858/10-steps-to-transformcapitalism-for-the-better
37
http://www.mbdc.com/cradle-to-cradle/c2c-framework/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/gallery/
sustainable-product-design-in-pictures#/?picture=396261012&in
dex=8
38
13
http://www.teslamotors.com/models
39
http://biomimicry.net/about/biomimicry/a-biomimicry-primer/
14
http://www.quietrevolution.com/
40
http://www.asknature.org/
http://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Design-Sim-Van-Ryn/
http://www.solarcentury.co.uk/solar-homes/residential-products/
dp/1559633891
c21e-solar-tiles-and-slates/
41
15
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Live-Low-Carbon-LifeIndividuals/dp/1844074269
16
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/marketing/
advertising_everywhere.cfm
17
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/
promoting-sustainable-behaviour-clever?INTCMP=SRCH
18
19
http://www.ecokettle.com/
20
http://ecodesign.lboro.ac.uk/index.php?section=57
http://www.alessi.co.uk/ashop-uk/home-design/electricalappliances-90150/electric-kettle-945/
21
http://www.duracell.co.uk/en-GB/promotions/promotionduracell-ultra-power.jspx
22
42
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRX1c_L3zdA
http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Hot_Topics_
Innovation_for_Sustainability_v7.pdf
43
44
http://vimeo.com/29670428
45
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuPIyqUc9oA
http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/designportfolio/
design_futures
46
http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/designportfolio/
design_futures/design_probes/index.page
47
http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/designportfolio/
design_futures/food.page
48
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seymourpowell/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jan/29/exhibition- sets/72157632715468193/
road-rowan-moore-review?INTCMP=SRCH
23
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23. Printed by Calverts, who are
certified to ISO 14001 by a
UKAS-accredited certification
body on 100% recycled and
fully FSC certified paper.

24. © seymourpowell 2013