The Medium is the Message
By Phil Hamlett.
An instructor walked into my office the other day, took one look at the new 600-page Worldchanging book and said “So there's an oxymoron if ever I've seen one: a 30-pound book about how to save the environment.” He’s got a point; perhaps more so than any other communications challenge, one must be sensitive to the actual form that sustainable messages take.
But how many times have you bristled when a client suggests that “there’s no need to print anything, let’s just do a PDF.” Taken at face value, this makes perfect sense: by not creating anything physical, you have in fact considered your ecological footprint. However, this approach only addresses sustainability in a superficial manner. The world does not spin on PDFs, and relegating all of one’s communications to that format would be ill-advised.
To create meaningful communications, designers entering this fray will want a full array of weapons at their disposal. Inability to print would be to concede defeat.
So what’s the alternative? Stay at home? The Worldchanging book is chock full of valuable case studies and insights. Should they be confined to a website? Would they get the same airplay? Would they have the same impact? Probably not. A body of work this extensive deserves publication, it demands to be seen and should be taken seriously. So there’s a value judgment; designers should be able to make that call.
Contrast Worldchanging with a recent public awareness campaign from California energy giant PG&E. Ironically, their bold call to “Green this City” was printed and wrapped around the morning paper–creating conspicuous mountains of “green” trash on street corners everywhere. In BART stations throughout the Bay Area, dumpster bins full of discarded cover sheets stood uncomfortably close to huge posters emblazoned with the same plea. In all fairness, perhaps PG&E should be applauded for at least making an effort. There is a website, and some public awareness is necessary to drive traffic there. Nonetheless, one can’t help but think that a little more thought regarding how this message was deployed would have gone a long way towards demonstrating PG&E’s sensitivity, sincerity or at the very least, sophistication.
Instead, we have a cautionary lesson straight out of Visual Literacy 101.
To create meaningful communications, designers entering this fray will want a full array of weapons at their disposal. Inability to print would be to concede defeat.
So what’s the alternative? Stay at home? The Worldchanging book is chock full of valuable case studies and insights. Should they be confined to a website? Would they get the same airplay? Would they have the same impact? Probably not. A body of work this extensive deserves publication, it demands to be seen and should be taken seriously. So there’s a value judgment; designers should be able to make that call.
Contrast Worldchanging with a recent public awareness campaign from California energy giant PG&E. Ironically, their bold call to “Green this City” was printed and wrapped around the morning paper–creating conspicuous mountains of “green” trash on street corners everywhere. In BART stations throughout the Bay Area, dumpster bins full of discarded cover sheets stood uncomfortably close to huge posters emblazoned with the same plea. In all fairness, perhaps PG&E should be applauded for at least making an effort. There is a website, and some public awareness is necessary to drive traffic there. Nonetheless, one can’t help but think that a little more thought regarding how this message was deployed would have gone a long way towards demonstrating PG&E’s sensitivity, sincerity or at the very least, sophistication.
Instead, we have a cautionary lesson straight out of Visual Literacy 101.
Posted by sustainability in General | February 28, 2007
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