We need more T-shaped designers

We shouldn’t even be talking about sustainable design. It should be integrated into everything we do. I feel the same way about digital design. Why talk about digital design when digital is now the water in which we swim? Almost every project that a designer touches will have a digital element. We’re only talking about digital design and sustainability separately because they’re both new – for the most part they haven’t been embedded into our education system and are things that we might need to educate ourselves in, on top of our original training or expertise.

Many see sustainability as an optional moral stance, an eco or green way of looking at the world. In fact, as people involved in the creation of products or services that will alter the way others live, we have a responsibility to ensure that the impact of every one of our design decisions is positive and not negative.

I’m often asked how a designer can begin to understand sustainability if they haven’t been taught it. It is not easy: sustainability involves complex and sometimes contradictory issues, and at times can appear to conflict with traditional design sensibilities. But if design is about making things better for people, then we must learn how to integrate the wider context into our design process.

In order to do this, you have to become a T-shaped designer. The original idea of a T-shaped person was first mooted by management consultants, then adopted by the design and innovation consulting firm IDEO last decade, who defined such people as ‘specialists with a passion and empathy for people and for other subject areas’.

Why T-shaped? A good designer needs in-depth knowledge of one area (the vertical stroke of the ‘T’) – a graphic designer knows about type, colour, print and so on, and has usually learnt this in formal education. The horizontal stroke of the ‘T’ represents a broader perspective about how design fits into the rest of the world. This includes knowledge of other related disciplines such as marketing or website design and the ability to work across silos, both within their organisation and outside. These kinds of skills are developed as a designer matures, and often leads them into interesting new areas that they then find design can be applied to.

I love the constant extending of that horizontal part of the ‘T’. Having to understand how a client’s business works; whether that’s spending time with a shelving company so that you can make them the best possible website, or going to Africa to speak to coffee growers in order to create a communication system for them that really delivers; it’s a massive learning curve and that’s what keeps life and your job enjoyable.

So what the T-shaped designer concept says is that we need to train specialists, but we need to teach them to be aware of the rest of the world. And that of course includes sustainability.

When I am invited to talk at a Green Week in an art school, my heart sinks – why isn’t sustainability being taught as part of the school’s core curriculum? If sustainability was taught as part of the vertical section of the ‘T’, if it was one of the building blocks that forms part of every designer’s education, what a powerful force for sustainability design would be as an industry.

Our broader horizontal T-shaped activities could then be focused on moving the sustainability agenda forward and applying our problem-solving skills to safeguard our future. Thankfully there are some enlightened courses. Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art has found a powerful way to make students take sustainability seriously. By making it a matriculation requirement, projects need to demonstrate sustainable thinking, in order for students to graduate.

Clearly, this level of integration is the way forward. In the meantime, for those of us who did not have sustainability included in our education, we need to build up the horizontal part of our ‘T’, and start thinking laterally about the rest of the world. Product lifecycles, origins of materials, transportation, human behaviour – what drives someone to repair something or to throw it away? And if they do throw it away where does it go? In my personal experience, this journey is not only essential, it is also really empowering and enjoyable.

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