Designing the Sustainable Self. The Power of Design; The AIGA National Design Conference, 2003

An investigation of how the visual language of sustainable design attempts to undermine class-informed identity values, and whether it has succeeded, thus far, in overturning consumers’ fixation with exclusivity and status.

Regardless of our so-called ‘place’ within society, we are made to feel that we can raise or lower our social position through what we are able to purchase. We are also likely to view the failure of others to consume what we can consume as déclassé behavior. Were this attitude to prevail in sustainability culture, it could lead to the paradox of sustainability becoming its own consumer ‘class’ in the making.