Sustainability and design in the eyes of students

Sustainability is probably one of the most mentioned terms in recent years. To some people, sustainability means caring for the environment, resources, and nature. To some others, this may be a term that takes a deeper socio-economic perspective. What does sustainability matter to students at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University? How will these young people approach it and share its associated concepts and ideas with their peers? Some of the University’s design students are here to tell their stories.

In two consecutive years, the Campus Sustainability Office collaborates with the School of Design to reach out and align like-minded Higher Diploma students who come up with innovative and trend-setting ideas to promote sustainability practices. These are the students taking up the Cooperative Projects, and they are required to engage in direct contact with the Campus Sustainability Office, work with briefs, deadlines, project planning, scheduling, research and analysis, in order to deliver appropriate design creatives addressing the desired effects and the context of driving a sustainable culture on campus. “We are more than happy to welcome their suggestions and works,” suggested by the Head, Campus Sustainability Mr. Joseph Chan. “Their design proposals are visually stunning and engaging. Their ideas are real challenges to some conventional strategies in conducting advertising campaigns of a similar nature.”

Potter Chung, Rachel Kwok, Sherry Tse, Valerie Choi, Angus Chu teamed up in October 2018 to deliver a video project to further the mission of bringing students together to appreciate trees and nature on campus. “Trees sit quietly around us, and people tend to neglect their presence. Trees may not all look appealing and fancy, but this should not discriminate their importance in our landscape,” these students said, “And we wanted to make others reflect on themselves how they need and can obtain some exposure from nature. The fact is we can all communicate with the trees in certain ways.”

Yes, trees can heal people even at a distance, and this concept is being vividly presented in the students’ video by a personified ‘tree fairy’. “With this story plot, we are confident that the video will be able to impress the most audience and make them review their relationship with these still-standing trees. It can extend into lessons about what we can do to appreciate the nature around us. Nature has been and is always our silent yet intimate friend and listener,” they explained.

These students picked a story-telling communicative strategy in their video project instead of a traditional and instructional manner. Such a choice also reveals their reading about how sustainability is being interpreted and perceived by today’s youngsters. “We have been exposed to sustainability concepts in our secondary school days. Sustainability is not a new or foreign term. Nevertheless, young people need more encouragement and motivation as they won’t develop positive habits if they don’t associate themselves with these concepts. The campus setting should be able to function as a favorable environment to drive and facilitate behavioral change,” they remarked. “And we would love to participate in projects on sustainability or to portray the sustainability messages in our future works. Sustainability is something of importance to every individual and society.”

Another group of design students came up with an out-of-the-box design to address sustainability. Cheng Chung Ue, Cheung Ka Sin, Nicholas Cheung, Isadora Lam, Wong Ho Lam, and Blake Lee teamed up with a mission to develop attractive posters that will help convince their peers to take action to reduce plastic usage.

Blake explained in detail how the team worked hard to prepare and research for their design project. “We spent some time researching into the recycling behavior of campus students and their attitudes towards the use of disposables. We were at the canteens making the counts, and we observed quite a lot of our peers bringing in their own reusable containers to carry their takeaway meals. That’s in fact quite encouraging, but more others are to be motivated as well.”

In the eyes of these innovative students, what mattered more was about motivating the campus users to make changes. With a truckload of plastic entering the oceans and the landfills possibly every minute, we may not need a surplus of information to learn we all have the responsibility to reduce plastic waste we generate. “Actions speak more. Young people need something attractive, striking, and eye-opening to make them reflect on their behavior and habits. They need media formats that tell the sustainability message clearly and creatively. We spent quite some time discussing and exploring this, and we were determined to pick and feature plastic items around us which we are so familiar with.” Blake said.

“We set a dramatic scaling up of these commonly-seen plastics which will excite viewers to get a quick grasp on their forms. We had a color palette that sharply contrasts, creating a vibrant and playful design. All these combined to reinforce a message which was repeatedly shown across our series of posters – that we should all ‘run away’ from plastics and going plastic-free is trendy, fashionable, and doable.” Their design was widely acclaimed and caught the eyes of other students and teachers when they showcased their posters in their project exhibition.

These design students worked to furnish projects to consolidate sustainability concepts on campus. “We need young minds and creativity to help in our sustainability education. They have truly helped us a lot,” Joseph concluded. “Sustainability is more than an academic discipline or a societal issue. It’s a lifestyle – people need to be repeatedly educated, reminded, and motivated about how they can contribute to the environment and be less of a burden to it.” Yes, it is not that difficult to understand. We can all make some conscious choices in our life and make a few switches in our habits to help save our suffocating earth.