The Living Principles for Design

It is completely unacceptable that a professional organization of this calibre publishes something on sustainable design that has ONE sentence on Life Cycle Assessment taken from wikipedia. This makes credibility building impossible.

I'm confused. Is this also the new "mission" of the AIGA as well? I see no reference to responsibility or sustainability in the mission listed on aiga.org, so I'm assuming that this language will soon be reflected in the overall mission of the AIGA and not just a token gesture to show that they "care"? Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) has made sustainability a core tenet of their member's practice. I am hoping that this is also that same edict from the AIGA?

Furthermore would this Living Principles Manifesto mean that the AIGA could no longer take sponsorship money from those paper companies and vendors that don't adhere to these Living Principles? How far down the rabbit hole will this go? Is the AIGA saying that all of their print collateral will follow these principles from this day forward? I hope so, however this is all rather vague, so I await further news.

Lastly, I don't see a lot of detail here but instead only a broad stroke which I've seen before with the First Things First Manifesto. When will we see the details? How can I follow this framework in my design practice. So far all I see are news bites announcing the Living Principles and a time line of events, but very little in pragmatic ways to work.

cameron,

thank you for taking the time to review the materials -- we continue to seek constructive criticism to evolve the living principles from the starting point we established here.

i assume the passage you are referring to (i.e. wikipedia) is the definition of LCA we provided on page 20 of the "genealogy" document. in developing this overview of some of the major visions, manifestos, principles, frameworks and tools, we consulted a wide variety of sources and aimed to use commonly-accepted definitions, whenever possible. in this particular instance, wikipedia provided an appropriate reference point. while the "genealogy" document is riddled with additional references to life cycle assessment, it by no means claims to be a comprehensive resource – we think of it as "a primer of sorts – an invitation for further discovery." the sources we cite go into much more extensive detail and we hope that they are easy to access from our references.

the genealogy document is in fact NOT part of the living principles framework. it merely paints a partial picture of the landscape we looked at in assessing an opportunity to help designers understand all streams of integrated sustainability.

the next phase of development will involve building more connective tissue between these concepts -- to put some more meat on the bones. to that effect, if you have any ideas and/or suggestions, we would very much like to hear them.

thanks again,
phil