Positioning for Purpose: Mapping brand strategy to sustainable design

SiDE Symposium, IIT Delhi: Design Education has witnessed several shifts and expansions in its post-Ulm evolution. The Sustainability in Design Education Symposium aims to explore various positions, pedagogies, and projects in postcolonial discourse that have addressed sustainability in its environmental, cultural, social, and economic dimensions over the past five decades. About my paper: ‘Positioning for Purpose’ is a five-week studio project written for second-year Graphic Communication Design undergraduates. Run as a Knowledge Exchange project in cooperation with the marketing firm FreshBritain, the brief asks students to explore how mainstream consumer brands can be strategically repositioned for the benefit of people and planet. Through the project students learn to work with archetypes as a mechanism to reframe and redirect brands towards ‘net positive’ futures. Brand Strategists have an important role to play in informing sustainable design policy. Unlike most designers, they work ‘upstream’ and have capacity to directly influence business decision-making. At present, very few design students are exposed to brand strategy, and as a result, their potential to affect change within this context is limited. This deficit presents an opportunity that is addressed in the project described here.