Academy’s Phil Hamlett Plays a Leading Role in ‘The Living Principles’ for Design Unveiled at AIGA National Conference

Taking responsibility for environmental outcomes, especially with respect to sustainability, is altering the nature of what constitutes “good design,” says Phil Hamlett, MFA Director of the Academy’s School of Graphic Design. Hamlett is among a group of leading designers who have assembled The Living Principles, a just-released guide for exploring design’s role in sustainability.

“Designers are passionate about sustainability, but there’s a gap between awareness and action,” says Hamlett. The Living Principles are a way of spanning the distance between thinking about sustainability and the making of objects and messages. As co-chair of the Center for Sustainable Design at AIGA (the professional association for design), Hamlett and his colleagues set out to synthesize and distill existing thinking about sustainability while extending those ideas’ reach and usability. The work of this team, on which Hamlett served as one of three principle architects, was unveiled Oct. 9 at AIGA’s annual conference. A notable feature of The Living Principles is the amending of a fourth dimension to the familiar triple bottom-line concept associated with sustainable practices: In The Living Principles, Environmental Protection, Social Equity and Economic Health are joined by Cultural Vitality, an addition which the authors say directly addresses the ways in which designers can most impact society.

Triple bottom-line reporting is a customary means of reporting results in the business world, Hamlett says, noting there’s a lot that traditional reporting structures don’t capture. Expanding into the fourth dimension recognizes the importance of shaping the messages designs convey. “It is our ability to imagine new futures, conceive new possibilities, and design things without the difficulties that plague so many existing products and services that secures our seat at this table,” Hamlett recently wrote in an illuminating essay titled “Bringing Good Design to Life”.

The graphic design profession lacks something that serves the same purpose LEEDS standards do in architecture, Hamlett observes. The Living Principles “provide a reference point that is similar. They are a framework for future contributions,” he says.

Learn more about the sustainability work of Hamlett, his colleagues and the AIGA here. Learn more about Compostmodern, the sustainable design conference (which Hamlett co-founded and which the Academy of Art University hosts) here.