Sustainable design is a great way to help the environment. I find it to be very impressive if I see a product that is well designed and has a label that says it is made from recyclable materials. Most of the products that I’ve seen are water bottles, bags, jewelry, and clothes. I believe that environmental design is growing, but not at a rapid rate and into every design field. My personal hobbies include basketball, drawing, and skateboarding. Therefore, I’d like to work my way into those fields with my graphic design degree. When I try to apply a environmental design mindset into that, I think about the materials that make up advertisements and products. I may be able to create posters made of recyclable paper, inks, or cardboard. In addition, the designs themselves could be an inspiration to recycle. An example would be a tribute to Kobe Bryant poster with trees and recyclable material designs infused into his signature basketball poses. That’d be a super cool form of media that would reach out to the basketball community and spread a positive message. As for the environmental design of physical products, I can see how skateboards and basketballs can be recycled for their wood and leather/rubber. From personal experience, I know that skateboarders go through 1-2 decks every month and just trash their used decks. There must be some way that these beat-up planks up wood can be reused to save trees. The leather and rubber of a basketball can also be reused. I don’t think a lot of people realize this and just toss their worn down basketballs away. In order to get people to notice that a lot of things are capable of being recycled, it goes back to my previous mention of possibly making environmental design friendly posters. Big corporations that make these products, such as Nike, Girl, Spalding, Wilson, and many more, need to create systems that encourage customers to recycle these goods. It is not just the basketball or skateboarding industry that I’m thinking about. All corporations that have popular products should make recycling their main priority. By doing so, the environment will benefit from our sustainable designs. In addition, we need to keep the environment from harm in order to live happy and healthily.
