SAD2021.txt

# A Sentence-A-Day (SAD)

_Nano Key Command Notes:_

- line numbers: `shift + alt + 3`
- line wrap: `esc + $`

## What is this?

Writing sentences. Day by Day. Trying to make something. Piece by Piece. It is not actually SAD. Hopefully it will be HAPPY -- or at least HOPEFUL/HELPFUL.

License: The text in this document is licensed with the creative commons by attribution share-alike. You can use this text for whatever you want as long as you cite where it came from, like linking back to this repo or merely stating that it came from Kristian Bjornard, and you must also license/share whatever you make in the same way -- share and share alike; let us create a freer and better and evolving culture!

## January

020210101 The year is 2021. The goal: climatizing (sustainabilitizing) all!?
020210102 What new thoughts, what new connections must be made for this to happen?
020210103 How do we act, how do we teach, how do we design, how do we participate in the world when everything is connected? Everything is connected. How do we even understand that -- how do you see and visualize all these interconnections. I mean, human cultures have gotten this in the past, different societies continue to get this in the present… how do we build it into all of our structures, cultural outputs, etc.? What does music sound like that embraces connection? what does design look like that embraces interconnectedness? what does a political party look like that knows its bureaucracy is connected to all other things? Does "spaceship earth" embody this?
020210104 When have you thought 10000 years into the future? How does the long now foundation help anyone in the present?
020210105 If you can't concentrate, what can you accomplish?
020210106 What is going on with everyone everywhere?
020210107 So far these aren't so much sentences as questions. I only ever have more questions. although, are questions a kind of sentence? all questions are sentences but not all sentences are questions!?
020210108 What do I want to sustain? What does the welfare of all life really look like? really entail? How do you actually design for this? What kind of design challenges structural inequalities and balances equity, ecology, and economy? Design that collaborates so as to create lasting, positive change in one's community?
020210109 Open source? Sustainability? how do these fit together? What am I writing about? thinking about? how do I turn something with so many random bits and pieces that don't outwardly appear to obvious connect into a clear and short presentation?
020210110 These gestures are undoubtedly utopian? how do I get back to sleeping and working coherently — how do I actually make something utopian? get back to gesturing?
020210111 Where are all the project ideas? where is all the time and energy to make something? Am I stuck perpetually writing and reading emails? Why am I so bad at documenting all that's been accomplished? I digress.
020210112 A long time ago in a forest not very far away. How to write meaningful eco-narratives?
020210113 What could help to make you feel safer right now? How can we help create that safety together?
020210114 Everything is Connected. I say this all the time. What does it mean? how does it have any impact on my work? on my life? on my home? on my practice? on my teaching? on my interacting with other people? Martin Luther King talks about the interconnectedness of all people and things in his final Christmas Sermon… That will be a useful quote at some point in some Everything is connected lecture or workshop.
020210115 Time. Time is on my side. No it isn't. Time is against us right now. We as a culture have wasted our time the last several decades. We as designers have helped use up precious time on the wrong outputs. What can I do right now to right this? How can this last year not have disappeared in vain? What time can I take advantage of -- the present! the now! the future of tomorrow… stop putting things off. do them now. Time keeps slipping into the future. and yet. its always now now. Do something. Design something. Better yet, don't design something, design a way to get rid of multiple old somethings for each new something that is needed.
020210116 Carbon Dioxide. What does it look like? is drawing the element itself useful in any aesthetic way? Does it lend itself to any other kind of sign or symbol? What other meanings or metaphors does "Carbon Dioxide" or "CO2" convey, bring with it? Is there something useful in considering how elements bond? if they can come together and break apart over and over again, what else can we start doing in a cyclical fashion that benefits both sides of the process?
020210117 350 PPM. Why is this the optimal parts per million? how do we get back to it? is there even a lower, better value for the PPM of CO2 to be? Is this important to convey to the average person? does it matter? what else doesn't matter that we can abandon and stop wasting energy on. Is 350 useful in any aesthetic or conceptual way? Can we compare it to a resting heartbeat? some value of useful nutrient in the human body or in a farm ecosystem? How do we start giving these values useful visual meaning from the perspective of a designer?
020210118 415 ppm. we are past 400ppm we have been for over a year. what does that mean? how to we go back to 350 or less? does anyone need to know anything about this, or is this like defcon level, it doesn't really matter to a person to know about it as its sort of unimportant except for when you're literally about to die.
020210119 What does a designer need to learn about the climate? about materials? about the composition of our atmosphere? about the carbon cycle? about the ecologies of our systems? social issues? ecological ones? raw weather and climate science? What!? What is important!?
020210120 Hypocrisy. How have I changed my own practice and life to fit a more regenerative, restorative way of being?
020210121 Precious Plastics. How do we defeat the idea of plastics as disposable; how do we make them the magic materials of the post-war!? Hm… that probably isn't the right thing… How do we defeat the idea of plastics being worthless? how might we make them precious again? why do we see any material as disposable? why don't we value every element, item, object, resource? There is only this Earth, and so we have no resupply mission; we have to treat traveling on spaceship earth like the astronauts treat being on the ISS!. Okay, so how can designers learn more about this!?
020210122 What messages should we be promoting? Who should I be talking to in Baltimore? What projects should be being worked on? where should energies go other than the foolish things I'm doing now!?
020210123 Poster. Why do we still design posters? What even is a poster? what ever happened to the poster? Is it a lost tool?
020210124 Who Does This Design Exclude? How do I make this a more informed part of my work and teaching? Particularly my work!? and not just "whom" but also what -- are there ways I am excluding nature? excluding the climate? excluding nematodes? excluding glaciers? excluding granite formations? And when you ask this question, how does the answer give you real, concrete, objective criteria to bring back to the process? how does one even address some of the potential answers to this question -- who else do I need to work with? to consult?
020210125 Uniform. 1. How should I dress to make it clear that my ideas, actions, designs, etc. all fit together correctly? Is the workers coveralls the right look? Does having a "costume" and a "character" to perform make anything meaningfully better? 2. should things be uniform in their finish? is it worth attempting this as a goal?
020210126 Manifesto. What do I want to be known for design wise? professor wise? What is my actual process or ideology? I say it is "sustainability" -- but what am I really sustaining? Ive done a couple things, but I end up sitting in my house pondering things and thinking up projects I'll probably never get to -- what could I be doing instead?
020210127 I have done so little of consequence. I want to be doing things, but what have I actually done!? Who have I helped? myself? anyone else? Who are my clients? why are they my clients? who else could I be doing work for? who else could I help? what else could I be doing at all? what has been the point of all this thinking and playing around if I can't actually show anything for any of it and I don't actually make any real progress?
020210128 Design cannot only be about itself, it must solve tangible problems. < this is a quote!? where did I find it? who said it? I just have it written on a random sheet of paper, and I didn't come up with it… anyone know the source!!??
020210129 How does being part of a worker union benefit people? Is it part of a sustainability agenda? Is the green new deal about union jobs and workers? Does unionization go in hand with sustainabilitizing?
020210130 A carbon sequestering book. So what does on need to make this work -- 1. paper. Some alternative fiber paper; 50% recycled content; 50% permaculture grown prairie grass fiber or something? reusing waste and practicing regenerative agriculture. 2. Ink. This is the real special sauce. How can something be printed clear; then the composition of the ink absorbs carbon dioxide out of the air, stores the carbon, and slowly darkens to carbon black over time!?!?!?! Oh, and is this compostable at the end of its life as well? 3. Cover. Again, cover needs to be compostable, recycled + permaculture fibers, and perhaps the type/image on the cover is just a blind deboss? 4. Binding. Perfect bind? use some sort of compostable glue? What else would need to be figured out?
020210131 Plastic Bottle. There are so many options for doing something with you bottle. What can I do!? how to I get to a place where I'm actually accomplishing anything I say I want/need to do on the precious plastics front?

## February

020210201 Another month. time keeps slipping away. What has been accomplished towards carbon drawdown goals in the last month? GM says they're going to exclusively EVs in the next 10 years, that's good. What am I doing? How to lead? How to do anything real, anything useful? how to operate at the local level? how to be helpful? don't worry about notoriety or externally recognized success. Just worry about actually doing something that benefits more than yourself……… that's part of sustainability for sure.
020210202 A climate project? what kinds of projects help promote doing something, learning something, solutioning something about our climate crisis? regular design projects that we just tweak the content or something of? regular projects with new constraints? or do we need completely new projects!? is the problem the content and the materials? or is the problem the way design works, the neo-liberal consumer capitalist nonsense? Always new. No maintenance. Objects that are meant for short term individual ownership. Design is complicit in promoting all that, designing for those ideals and systems -- even designing those ideas and systems in the first place. So, what are climate design projects? how do we get the welfare of all life into every project? how do we get drawing down carbon dioxide into every project? How do we get the donut economy into every single project?
020210203 Why do we design? is it to be a designer -- meaning to have a job? or is it for some more meaningful reason -- you need something; you're helping someone; you're repairing or improving upon a system; why design? is this necessary? who benefits? who suffers? If the only reason you are designing is that its a job, well, what are you designing? does your job have you designing the future's (or this afternoons even) trash? Are you in the waste creation business or the improving things business? when you're improving things, are you factoring in improving the whole earth? or just some market metric? Let's focus on the whole earth above all else.
020210204 The process is part of the final. What does this mean? How does one's process become apparent; how is it the important aspect? does it relate to other kinds of context that affect how one chooses to go about designing in the first place?
020210205 Uncertainty. You have to be okay with Uncertainty. What if we design and build systems that plan for uncertainty? that take uncertainty into account? is this a way to design better? to build better? to adapt better as we go? We know we won't be able to predict things and that outcomes will surprise us… so why not design this way too??? I can't know everything -- so how do I plan for this? a) we need more people involved in more things… we need to talk to each other more. I need to talk to more people. But how do we understand uncertainty? how to embrace uncertainty?
020210206 I am struggling. Habits form slowly. Some are easy. Some are not. How to get over staying up late and instead go to bed, then maybe wake up a bit earlier? Why is 2200–0200 my ultimate working time?
020210207 Habits to start? earlier to bed. earlier to rise. exercise. live stream working. make more videos that explain my ideas to students and the world at large. How to feel compelled to do these things? can you train yourself to do that? to participate in these things in new, larger ways?
020210208 These Gestures are undoubtedly utopian. What of my projects fit under this umbrella? Where does this start? how far back does it go? how might it be a great organizing principle for my projects? for a lecture? Is my initial Senior project from undergrad too far away to start with? that works -- telling the "I was on an engineering track, then I switched to art…" story? what about working at sundaysenergy? my own grad school experience? how to turn that into a compelling narrative that is also artfully illustrated AND relevant to social/ecological/sustainable things today? the signs signaling sustainability is also utopian!?
020210209 How do I make all of these questions and ideas and bits and pieces go together in a coherent and useful way that actually generates out content I can quickly do something with? how does this actually help me understand what I'm trying to do? how does it make more meaning? how does it enable me to help real people? how does it get me to do the things I am not good at doing? What does sustainability mean? do I even know? who is harmed by my inaction? who is harmed by my actions? Too far too fast…
020210210 Climate Change. So the climate is changing. What does that mean. Social climates, ecological climates, both. How are climate and weather related? how does graphic design show or make this all more understandable? is focusing on climate change even important? is it too big? too abstract? What's the perspective of Drawdown.org on that idea? What about The Climate Mobilization? How does Climate Designers fit into all of this? What framework or ideology should lead? What about AirMiners? as a community do they have any stronger organizing principle or concepts other than just "get carbon out of the atmosphere and into other sinks?" What is the minimum you need to learn to understand this? to have enough people grok this to actually change some behaviors? to change some social and cultural structures? What does a climate friendly museum look like? what does a climate friendly school look like? what does a climate friendly
020210211 I am lost. Design is not the answer. What I am currently doing is not the answer. Where is the meaningful connection? Where is the organizing on at the grassroots level? who do I need to talk to? How does someone actually make progress on complicated issues? just doing things? what's holding me back?
020210212 off the cuff note to self: What about Climate Designer Oblique Strategies cards! That's totally what this is -- draw a card, add that to your project… or draw a card, factor this into your idea student… we just mix in random things from Drawdown.org, EPA adaptation strategies, various frameworks, old ideas (Reduce/Reuse/Recycle?) -- could be a cool "product" to give out/sell -- could also be a website, like http://typecooker.com/ or I made this for a class once: https://teaching.ookb.co/courses/gd365/package-cooker.html. Novel carbon sequestration ideas: Artists use only charcoal to draw; works become small carbon sinks moving forward.

## March

020210313 What does this all mean? is this what a mid life crisis is? struggling with making sense of one's choices or whatever? how does that relate to one's practice or profession? What about in the context of design in general? what is design supposed to be for?
020210317 I have so many threads, so many thoughts. None of them seem to be followable? where do I go next? how do I actually accomplish one of these things?

## June!

Okay, I am going to do something here again everyday. I am going to find random things in my are.na sustainability and design channels, things that can work like prompts. I'll then write several words on that prompt… not sure if I set a word limit, or a time limit. We'll see how the first couple of days/weeks go. March, April, and May were real rough — hopefully things go better moving forward!

### 020210601 2230 June 1 2021 Baltimore MD

- Prompt: utilize the [triple bottom line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line) in judging design's effectiveness / https://www.are.na/block/5258725
- current CO2 ppm: 417.04 ppm

To utilize the triple bottom line as an effectiveness judgement, you first need to know what the triple bottom line is. This is in general, people planet profit -- social sustainability, environmental sustainability, economic sustainability -- trying to gauge sustainability by how it functions in all these spheres, not just one. So effective design then must be design that is economically, socially AND environmentally sustainable. (viable?).

(VENN DIAGRAM OF THE TRIPLE SUSTAINABILITIES OVERLAPPING) / https://www.dropbox.com/s/tq4zgql06h0mxw3/2_1_UnderstandingSustainability1.jpg?dl=0 / oh, and here is an interesting image too: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xhyiv2vkbnkl3zg/2013-10-28_blog_image_sustainability.jpg?dl=0

Yeah great. But wtf. What does this actually mean! I've been saying this and thinking about it for over a decade. How does this help anyone? how does this help a designer?

Typically, design's effectiveness is ONLY measured via its economic viability. Does this cost too much? Is this expensive to produce? Does this designer charge too high a rate? whats the ROI? what did I make having spent this design budget? how many new customers did this mailer generate? etc.

Well, the triple bottom line would say, no more. You cannot ONLY judge "success" of a design on these economic metrics -- does it generate a lot of new leads BUT ALSO generate a lot of new carbon pollution? well, that's ineffective design! did we make a lot of books at the cost of slave labor in an overseas printing facility that also pollutes the surrounding landscape with heavy metals and VOCs? BAD DESIGN!

The goal here is to migrate the thinking around what "good design" is -- there is good design and bad design; instead of good "normal" design and then some other kind of sustainable design and then maybe bad "normal" design… ANYWAY. We should have "Good Design" > design that is socially, environmentally, and economically concerned, and then bad design -- design that is only concerned with one of these things…

How does this move us to a different paradigm for teaching design? for making design? for evaluating design? How does this get us away from pure aesthetic judgements of "quality" in a design? Does this allow for other concepts than pure formalism in the discussion?

How are other industries or companies using the triple bottom line effectively? where and how else do I research this? how can this be a selling point to a client? how to market oneself this way? triple bottom line designer? does that bring me new clients?

What is social sustainability? how does one design for it? do the precious plastics things fit into this? is collaborating with the united workers, with the zero waste people, is that socially sustainable? Does finding clients that are doing this stuff the right way for a designer to get into this?

There are some good questions -- what is a designer to do? find new clients? find new projects? or bring new thinking and tools to all the old projects? Can you do this AND work with everyone you used to? does some value shifting have to happen and then suddenly you are in a different place? a different space? and you can't work with or communicate effectively with those from before (_Everything is Fucked_ has something about this; newtons laws sections… didn't highlight while reading will have to go back!?).

What is effective design? we have to define that too? When is a design effective? I guess it depends on what the design is for. A design that causes the intended behavior change is effective. A design that communicates the intended message to the intended audience is effective. Using the triple bottom line gives you some external objective constraints to help measure this no? Behavior changes, messages, things that harm social constructs or environmental systems in the name of economic "gain", these can no longer be effective with this criteria.

Side note: how to use [tiddly wiki](https://tiddlywiki.com/) or roam to help with this? how to insert footnotes, references, etc?

### 020210602 June 2, Baltimore MD

- Prompt: Design should pay renewed attention to human values like poetry, knowledge, culture, but also our basic needs in relation to contemporary challenges, like housing, mobility, clothes, food, and water. (page 15) / https://www.are.na/block/4660751 (From _Designing Everyday Life_ https://www.are.na/kristian-bjornard/brn-designing-everyday-life)
- current CO2 ppm: 420.44 ppm

How might design pay more attention to basic needs like housing, mobility, clothes, food, and water? what does "design for better housing" look like? how about "design for improved water quality" or "design for improved water access"? Are these the kinds of things that are enabled, the kinds of design problem seeking that is unlocked, once you measure design effectiveness with something like the triple bottomline instead of exclusively the economic bottomline?

Where do I turn my own work onto these types of things? how to turn my own designing and thinking and practice towards these basic needs?

Housing, mobility, clothing, food, water, these are all things that also can play into different Project Drawdown "solutions."

Is this a useful way to interact directly with the city of Baltimore? is this how to think of new content for coursework? Is this a good way to frame project briefs? Is this a good way to identify problems.

Side note: Design as problem finder, not problem solver — more on that sometime?

Writing straight for half an hour is hard sometimes.

Do I need to differentiate between "Graphic Design" and "Design?" ??? Do I care for my own practice? When I say design, I am meaning "Signs on Substrates" or "Signs Signaling" — Signs on Substrates Signaling Sustainability!? Every gesture is a communicative tool, so its all graphic design, even if its also a sculpture or poster or cup or lamp or farm field!? So, design to improve water access, this is a graphic design project, even if its not a PSA pamphlet. How do I interact with those kinds of projects? how does graphic design? how is that brought into the design classroom? Why is this so hard for me to wrap my head around and explain? Am I trying to hard to have this make sense, be explainable, what can I just accept and move on with?

So, Sustainable design is design that pays more attention to housing, to mobility, to clothes, to food, to energy, to water, to social reform, to music, to trash collection, to waste… It pays closer attention to those things, so that more actual problems can be identified. It doesn't need to solve all of them (is that an out of date modernist idea???) but show the pain points more clearly, show the opportunities more clearly, provide the lens someone else can see a solution through? see THEIR PERSONAL solution through?

Whew, by paying more attention to these things, hopefully one also notices more alternative experiences? like how do we pay attention to these things around the city and let it show us not only design opportunities, but allow us to see the ways in which other people experience and interact with food and water and shelter.

We can also talk about these things not as human centric only: design for better housing could also include peregrine falcons and white tail rabbits and cicadas and little brown bats — how are all these other species ALSO housed better? How can design be little brown bat centered, not just human centered? Or, even Dinoflagellate centered, like designing the harbor to be a better home to brackish water loving eukaryotes AND people!?

Starting to think like that begins to surface more opportunities for visualizing the nodes of connection; how "EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED."

If everything is connected, then designing for better housing for people means we also need to design better housing for bay oysters. My house is connected to the land around it which is part of the greater watershed which is part of the bay which is part of the Atlantic which is part of Spaceship Earth… How does protecting a piedmont forest protect the bay and protect my home?

What housing constitutes good housing? what is better housing? Whose criteria, what criteria do we use? Are there multiple? once there is good housing, then there is obviously bad housing. What to do with the "bad" — destroy it? rehabilitate it? abandon it? recycle it? repurpose it?

Good: Simple row houses? my own old stone house?
Bad: McMansion; some big Roland Park houses?

When is a house too big? When does a house use too much energy? how does class and race and place and culture play into that decision? Why should we have so much private space? Where does the commons and collective ownership come in? how about communes? other kinds of living communities? how are they about "better" housing or "better" water utilization?

When these things are the goal of a graphic designer, of a graphic design process, what changes? how does designing for better mobility lead to new or different design techniques or visuals? Are there old tropes we've used that say "mobility" that are no longer useful if we need a sea change? All new visual vocabularies? by learning a new we train our brains to a different understanding. What visual synergies exist to pair the ancient with the novel? There are plenty of solutions from our past, this isn't just a young person's game; this isn't just the purview of tech start ups.

Why am I so cynical and bitter and angry.

### 020210603 June 3, Baltimore MD, Basement Standing "Desk"

- Prompt: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_innovating_to_zero
- current CO2 ppm: 420.12 ppm

Shit, this was from TED2010!? So bill gates says that energy and climate are the most important to the kinds of people that the Gates Foundation helps…

As we make energy cheaper we have to contend with the constraints of releasing too much CO2.

Innovating to Zero. it is important. We have to stop emitting CO2.

- CO2 = P * S * E * C
  - P > people
  - S > services per person
  - E > energy per services
  - C > carbon dioxide per unit of energy

We're not going to do anything about the people, we want to help people, not purposefully get rid of anyone.

Services, well, we need to increase health, education, utilities, etc. to all people.

We can do something about E and C

P and S will increase for now, P might start to go down in the next decades, if other things can be done positively!?

unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability

Investigate more: Bill Gross > eSolar, Vinod Kholsa, Nathan Myhrvold

2020 > 20% reduction in CO2; by 2050 we need 80% reduction in CO2?
2020 > zero emission investigations; by 2050 need zero emissions tech deployed everywhere

So Bill Gates' wish for "one important thing by 2050" was that "something that gives us energy for half the cost AND no co2 gets invented" -- this is the highest impact…

- More basic research funding
- market incentives to reduce CO2
- Entrepreneurial opportunities
- rational regulatory frameworks

Innovate to zero. Useful goal, useful objective way to measure "success"

20 years to invent, 20 years to deploy... we've spent 10 years of that invention budget, are we doing okay?

If you make it make economic sense, then it doesn't matter if it makes climate sense. Is that a rational approach to take? why talk about the climate at all then?

≠≠≠

Okay, so what did I learn from that accidentally 10 year old video? what questions for design does it bring up? Does it again provide objective criteria for helping define or evaluate "good" designing?

I mean, for sure, graphic designing that helps with Gates' checklists is "better" designing then. AND oh man, that drive energy per service down, the drive CO2 per unit of energy down, variables in the equation of "net zero" are good design metrics. What materials to spec? what processes to spec? how to power my laptop? whether or not to even use a laptop? These all become important things.

How might new projects fit into this smartly? Are my "spontaneous lamps" good project exemplars for this? how about the precious plastics tooling? what about just our silly yard and house conversions? How can things that I do as gestures showcase these other kinds of innovative thinking and working and the other future possibles that are available? That's what Bill needs right? If we want to innovate to zero we also have to VISUALIZE the alternative possibles for people to excite them about innovating more and faster and better!?

### 020210604 June 4, Baltimore MD, Dining Table

- Prompt: Who said eco-friendly needs to look eco-friendly? / https://www.are.na/block/11699665
- current CO2 ppm: 	419.73 ppm

Eco-friendly. This is a kind of shorthand for "Environmental Sustainability." I think it has some semantic issues; it can easily be used incorrectly; but, it is understandable to people in a way that other things -- sustainability, restorative, etc. -- aren't.

Define: Eco-friendly > not environmentally harmful (Merriam Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eco-friendly)

So, if something is not environmentally harmful, does it bring along a different set of aesthetic judgements since a different set of manufacturing and material judgements have been used? If the normal way of making and transporting and selling things IS environmentally harmful, what's an environmentally un harmful capitalist machine for making, transporting and selling? Do the visual aesthetics that have helped create our current situation need to be abandoned or replaced along with all the other systems?

Cradle to Cradle outlines a situation where most of the systems in terms of commerce and society stay the same, but the tools, materials, systems, processes for manufacturing are totally transformed. In that system, well, some aesthetics would by their very nature change, some materials wouldn't exist, some structural, built forms would have to be abandoned due to energy waste, material squandering, etc. but most of the wrapping, most of the signs on substrates, they could probably stay the same. There's a slightly different message to communicate, but in the end, the goal is the same, make more, sell more, get happy and fitter and more successful through consumption, but let's just make sure its the right consumption. [Need to cite some things for this, probably would need to elaborate on my point, not just flippant].

But is that possible? is that desirable? Eco-friendly it may be in theory... How does that change if more commons based practices are utilized?

A Tesla is perhaps a good example. Teslas are meant to look like cool contemporary cars. They are designed to take advantage of and add too contemporary luxury car culture. This is a status symbol that you own. This is about individual ownership. This is about speed. While a Tesla might be eco-friendly compared to an equivalent luxury gasoline sedan, the goal of being faster, the goal of being shinier, the goal of being nicer, the goal of replacing cars 1 to 1 with this other "better" car are not. These ideas are still about more, these ideas are still about the past and present ideas of what a car is for, what constitutes coolness in cars. That in and of itself is not eco-friendly. Real eco-friendliness is no cars right? or foraged bamboo pedal and wind powered wheeled vehicles… Where do Tesla and Polestar fit into that ideal? How can you design a system that after existing for a little while designs itself out of existence? a car that through being sold replaces OTHER people's cars! This is sort of what services/ownership models like Lynk+Co do -- you individually buy the car, BUT! you can lend it to other people in your network easily.

Okay, but that's not about aesthetics right -- What kind of cars look eco-friendly? the solar powered ones? the EV1? the little things like Smart Cars? For buildings and cars where there are objective forms for measuring more or less energy wastage aesthetic choices can be tied to other important choices… or rather are the outcome of other choices. How does this work in choosing a typeface or image or page size or paper stock? How do all of those choices lead to new or different or alternative visuals.

What does eco-friendly look like in the first place? does everyone picture green leaves and brown paper and hand written lettering? do people picture sleek modernist forms indicative of big tech like Apple and Stripe who promote their "eco-friendly" choices heavily? IS eco-friendly looking synonymous with crunchy, granola-y, burlap of old?

Why do I always get hung up on this idea. Why can't I let this go? Why must I have an answer for this quandary?

### 020210605, Baltimore MD, Dining Table

- Prompt: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/ / saved here: https://www.are.na/block/10168641
- current CO2 ppm: 419.64 ppm

Okay, so how does this help one be a better climate designer? a better sustainabilitist? a better designer period?

[[MISSED THIS ONE!]]

### 020210606, Baltimore MD, Dining Table

- Prompt: Rehash 020210604, Who said eco-friendly needs to look eco-friendly?
- current CO2 ppm: 419.76 ppm

So why do I get hung up on the aesthetics question, on the what do things look like hill? it is because of IDEOLOGY and how art, how visual culture communicates IDEOLOGY through its visuals.

What something looks like tells you something about the ideology(ies) it represents or it desires to come from. Modernism as a style HAD an ideology at first, the way it looks come from radical ideas about society and art and design's place in society...

the best for the most for the least.

Okay, so eco-friendly looking things should have an agenda. Or rather an eco-friendly agenda should result in a specific kind of style that then visualizes eco-friendliness.

1. I believe this to be true. Forms represent ideologies.
2. However, if your only goal is form making, you can just replicate forms and accidentally (or purposefully) remove them from their ideologies.
3. You can make something appear to have an ideology by utilizing a form from a specific ideology -- using "urban" graphics like graffiti, etc. to make your high end sneaker "edgy" or whatever.
4. There are more complex ways to grasp "what something looks like" however, and we need to migrate this conversation that way.

I get hung up on the form part of things. But I forget, form is a subset of content, and that is a subset of context. So, we need to look at contexts, we need to look at interconnections and audiences and messages and whatever else and let that lead us to forms.

This is a good time to just go into the form <> content <> context discussion. That needs a write up too! (Andrew Blauvelt reference; Ellen Lupton? did she ever talk about this at large or just to us in grad school? what else do I say about it? oh, Christopher alexander has a lot about it in notes on the synthesis of form and more.)

Once you have forms that represent ideologies though; you really easily get into territory where the form disconnects from said ideology -- or is transfigured to represent a new or different ideology.

I find this complicated in the world at large. For example, small social enterprises that are designed to look the same as a giant corporate bank... what to do about this? where else to look for new forms? how to not appropriate something else incorrectly? can new forms be constantly invented, is that even worthwhile or sustainable? what does eco-friendly look like? even that is a good question. is it the stereotype -- crunchy granola brown and green things -- or is it that the "looking eco-friendly" is because all the eco-friendliest choices were made for materials, processes, etc. and whatever form that manifests, that is what eco-friendly looks like; and so that might be malleable for different quantities of something; or different kinds of projects result in different "forms" despite them all being eco-friendly?

Does this get harder or easier once you get into "design for the welfare of all life"?

transition to my various versions of my Nebraska talk from March 2021. What other ways did I try to explore and explain this? how can I illuminate all of that previous thinking more effectively?

### 020210607, Baltimore MD, Dining Table

- Prompt: Rehash 020210604 & 020210606, Who said eco-friendly needs to look eco-friendly?
- current CO2 ppm: 419.80 ppm

#### Sustainable? FLOSS?

How does one move towards a more sustainable graphic design practice?

- Part of my solutions are transitioning clients, materials, etc. towards “better” options;
  - what "better" means is relative of course, but in general lower energy, less materials, safer materials, etc.
- my GNU/Linux (F/LOS generally) experiments are another;
- Reusing old design ideas another. (Design-a-Days; Kit-of-Parts)

One might ask if spending hundreds of hours trying to relearn a workflow and tooling in GNU/Linux is sustainable (the general open sourcery is SOOOO much work to transition too)? But! I am more than capable of reusing much older computers in this realm, so there is a possibility for not having to get NEW computers anymore?

The GNU ecosystem is fully into reusing old ideas — just reusing ideas period.

The ecosystem for libre tools is more like a natural ecosystem: evolution; variations due to minor differences of philosophy or habit or desire; a plurality of solutions… If the way our tools are built and evolve is more like natural cycles/processes; does that allow those tools to fit into our lives, society, and culture in more "natural" ways? (natural meaning finding harmony with nature; being more "a part" of nature rather than "apart" from nature).

Do the ideals of F/LOSS align with the ideals of sustainability?

Does "all humans and other life should flourish" fit into F/LOSS as an ideal?

- go into flourishing?
- Bruce Mau's design for the welfare of all life
- get some blurbs from my Towards Sustainable Aesthetics essay?

Where and how do my interests in Design serving a flourishing/welfare of all life agenda and my interests in F/LOSS  overlap; how are they additive; how do they serve each other. Are they negative or at odds with each other?

- Our current capitalist constructs DO NOT improve the welfare of all life;
- the origins of F/LOSS are anti-capitalist — or at least anti valuing making a buck over the good of your neighbor — so, if you have to use software, F/LOSS is more likely to AID you in helping all life flourish than proprietary/non-free softwares. (Is this provable? or measurable?)

#### Waste = Food

Free software can allow for more creative waste to become creative food. And, WASTE = FOOD is a sustainable ideal. So, does that make free software more sustainable?

Waste = Food; what other ways can I find that this is true for creative kinds of waste? As I mentioned before I think that in some ways F/LOSS improves upon this equation.

Is this also how vernacular patterns/building come into the picture — are free/libre open models the new vernacular (is that how I make my designing today more like the way say a Cape Cod house comes together?)

Waste = Food is a great idea to apply to more things than just the natural world. Here's a great prompt: the earth's major nutrients are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, & nitrogen ... what are graphic design's major nutrients? (and! how can they be cycled and recycled into new graphic design indefinitely?)

Dunne and Raby propose that design should explore activities and outcomes that question and challenge status quo industrial agendas—however! for the most part the designers doing this are still using status quo tools! Sustainability (at least the flourishing variety I am interested in) is NOT the current status quo; so if I am challenging the assumptions of contemporary design and capitalist consumerism, then I need non-capitalist consumerist tools to do that with—enter F/LOSS.

Sustainable Graphic Design is a mindset, not a checklist of "the right" materials

- If you have the right mindset, but still use the wrong materials, does it matter?
- If one uses better materials, but for the status quo aims, does it matter?
- In what ways can I change how I work and live to yield immediate results?

#### Sustainable graphic design does not exist.

Sustainable graphic design does not exist. that might mean "there is no such graphic design that can count as sustainable — its all wasteful garbage that does nothing good" — or — sustainable graphic design doesn't exist meaning that it comes together to serve a communication purpose; deliver a semiotic message; and then redistributes back to whatever energy and matter it was before.

The point is not that literally you can't make it (though that is sort of what I was thinking at first), but that a graphic designed thing that is sustainable comes together to communicate the message it needs to communicate; and then can dematerialize back to its initial parts once the communicative need is over. How does "signs on a substrate" translate to "pieces coming together for a determinate amount of time and then returning to their constituent pieces"

Sustainability is about knowing what you want to sustain. Libre tools are about a person's freedom to do what they want. If I don't want to sustain our moderno-techno-capitalism, then I should probably use libre tools while creating alternatives... what do I want to sustain though? It is easy to say what I don't want to sustain; less clear to say what I do want to.

If sustainable designers don't make design; what do we make? who do I need my next clients to be? If I am all in on the sustaino-libre stuff; what are the kinds of things I must investigate? And, how does being a "graphic designer" play into all this when/if/as my projects become more about software development; more about building bicycles; more about actions or interventions; more about proposals and plans?

I know I like to say how the sustainabilitist principles project exemplifies "sustainable design does not exist" since the objects came together to be a sculpture for an exhibition and then went back to being the objects afterward — but how does that work for other kinds of projects? can I work with clients and still pitch that kind of solution? (do I have examples????)

Should sustainable design look intentionally different to tell everyone that its not the same? If the paradigm must shift; then the styles should probably shift as well to be clear that they are in all ways different? By just using different tools and typefaces and image sources do you do this? does it need to be more extreme than that?

What is perennial graphic design that is restorative to culture — that protects and builds cultural health? (the same way that prairie grasses build and protect the soil health of the plains?)

What does "graphic designing" do to heal and restore the world? how can making anew unmake all the old?

What are local and reusable materials for visual design? making my own paper? creating sheets of remade plastic "paper"? digging and making my own clay to make tablets out of? firing pages that way? what do I produce with those things? plates to print from? stamps? seals? do I draw and compose right into clay? what else allows me to put "signs on substrates" in a meaningful way that continues to let me "graphic design" but really does something about material usage; education; communication; etc???

Am I a sustainable designer? or am I a sustainable person that happens to design — everything I design is thus influenced by my sustainabilitism.

What is the goal of "designing." If everything is a design project; is making new forms important; isn't just fixing what needs fixing an example of "good design" — does the solution need to be novel? (If I design and sew a traveling silverware roll using salvaged cloth and found silverware is that any less of a design project than designing a new folding "hobo knife"?) IF the answer is no, it's not different, then wtf, what am I doing, what am I teaching? If the answer is yes, it is different; do I want to be a "designer" then? Why not just a vernacular crafter or builder? Is this counterculture modernism? Whole-earthers did some things like this right? Zomes? Papanek's coffee can radio? A lot of reuse; but with the goal of making things people need in the moment? Still new things; but a repurposed or reconfigured materials based on what is at hand; what is readily available? What is design: making things we want? making things we need? Solving problems? what problems? whose problems? What does it take to let "sustainability" or "restorative design" take a hold in mainstream culture/society? does it need to be more of a religion? more of a political party? Do there need to be more movies or kids shows or whatever that fully embrace doing something about climate change as their theme to affect a change? Regular TV news? obviously the current journalism does little. Why? What else can I speculatively brainstorm? science fiction books are a plenty. Can we make this a WWII like "war effort" to fight the evils of climate change? Reframe everything in the context of us against the greenhouse gasses — C02 increasing is the same as the Nazi's winning Europe? What other ways of framing this are there? I need to try more! That's another potential win for Graphic Design — communicating this in as many ways as is possible.

How does graphic design take carbon back out of the atmosphere? what can communication design (meaning what can signs on substrates) do to get carbon out of the air and into the ground? to keep carbon bottled up? does making bricks of plastic and then shaving them into paper help? does making my own paper from used clothes and scrap paper help? what else can I do??? just picking Risograph isn't enough. Just buying some renewable offsets isn't enough. How does this bake into designing generally? to design pedagogy? to society at large?

Stabilizing the climate isn't about reducing emissions, we have to _zero_ our emissions. Instead of just lowering things, we need to stop completely and then actually remove carbon from the atmosphere. Driving an EV doesn't cut it. replacing a car w/ a used bicycle & your lawn with a permaculture garden is a much better start.

to change a system; intervene in small ways around the edges ... at some point that system will react to those changes and be made to change ??? small is not less important than big in a complex system.

Designing Tomorrow's World Today: What design does this; what did the messaging around Ozone depletion look like? What about Carson's _Silent Spring_ related anti-chemical rhetoric? what about WWII "we need you" type things? Oh man, that's a great resource — war time propaganda posters. Does that stuff work now? what is cultural convincing design now? what is design that causes people to follow and just do?

Survival of the most generous interconnected groups.

life-affirming design thing.

Every graphic design problem's answer is not a book; or a poster; or an identity... it is not necessarily a visual design problem; superficial 2D surface decoration isn't the answer to every problem — though the thinking of a designer might reveal an interesting solution still... Can it always be framed as signs on substrates (signs on surfaces?) even if not a visual "answer"?

if sustainability is a cyclical, restorative, resilient, flourishing, non-anthropocentric, maintenance-based, stewardship, co-existing thing...... what? you cannot expect everyone to understand what you mean by sustainability — so do we need other words; or do we just need to say that we mean all those other things when we say sustainability. it is a shorthand sign for all those other words...

Design is about connections. Design is about bringing people and ideas and problems and solutions together.

Design only works when it is trying to achieve a success for the planet; for the welfare of all life.

We do not have unlimited energy. We do not have unlimited resources. How does this change our relationship with designing? With capitalism? with our economic ideals?

What do I want to sustain? What does the welfare of all life really look like? really entail? How do you actually design for this? What kind of design challenges structural inequalities and balances equity, ecology, and economy? Design that collaborates so as to create lasting, positive change in one's community?

### 020210608, Baltimore MD, Bedroom

- Prompt: Design only works when it is trying to achieve a success for the planet; for the welfare of all life.
- current CO2 ppm:

Writing for 30 minutes a day is turning out to be complicated. I am not good at reserving time for anything I just tack it all on at the end. This is not sustainable.

If design only works if it is trying to achieve a success for the planet, then in general design is always failing.The laptop I write this on is a disaster; my home I write from a scar on the land. What destruction has my life and my constant need for energy and resources caused? how do we make amends? how does design make amends? what is the goal? designing away design?

I'm not making it today. My mind is empty.

Journal or essay?

what is the point of this exercise? to generate content? to clarify ideas? to what end? for whom? Is this useful for me or for others? who is my audience? designers? or general people? Practitioners or academics?

I watched part of _Jurassic Park_, this idea that we're meddling with things we still can't grasp or understand; that our earth's systems are beyond our control and we need to stop trying so hard to be the Earth's rulers... that all resonates.

Maybe I need some better plans or constraints for this? like not just picking a prompt, but trying to find something that needs more explaining? trying to find something I feel that I don't quite understand or can't quite explain and that could be better illuminated?

I need to do some stretching. Yoga everyday, writing everyday, where is the time for building legos with one's kid! How to give up other things for the common good? not just materials, resources, but wasted efforts, wasted time. How to read again? when did I last finish a book? so sad. That's not sustainable either!

how do I make this more usable? more searchable? more reusable? more build-upon-able? do some of these things end up as their own documents? their won essays? is it worthwhile to keep absolutely every thing in one foolishly gigantic text file?

### 020210609, Baltimore MD, Bedroom

- Prompt: What would make my own designing better serve the welfare of all life?
- current CO2 ppm:

do I need new clients? new ideas? new directives?

Are there exemplary designers doing this in a way that I find aspirational? I mean there are the occasional projects that come along that I say "wow" too; but actual design practices? Perhaps Sanctuary Computers?

### 020210610, Baltimore MD, Patterson Park!

- Prompt: identify materials, processes, technologies, and strategies that improve social and ecological conditions / https://www.are.na/block/5249392
- current CO2 ppm:

Also, what is this: https://theopenbody.com/

### 020210611, Baltimore MD, My Hot Humid Basement

- prompt: how can I make this a better process? how to make these more usable? how to make this exercise sustainable?

How can I make this more usable, reference-able, make the ideas build upon each other more AND end up more shareable out in the world at large as I work on it? how can I then easily post things on medium and such too!?

Okay, what if I write these in a tiddly wiki? I can then make each day's effort a tiddler; ideas can be cross referenced; shared definitions can easily be added/created/evolved. I can then also figure out how to make it a live site! and maybe even host it on my own little pi server on the local network, and then figure out port forwarding to get it live from the house!? That could become my own litle solar powered web server.

So, that sounds like a good thing to try the next several posts -- make this a tiddly wiki. I'll add all that here to this repo i guess? then its easily shareable across my machines until I figure out how to get a little raspberry pi server going.

The rest of this 1/2 hour will be spent setting that up I guess!