Fight from the inside-out or boycott brands? How graphic designers shape a more sustainable and ethical food system

We are living in a bittersweet moment when we consider how the production and consumption of food are contributing to climate change. We have enough information to know what the healthier, more ethical and sustainable choices are but we’re far from a place where those options are widely accepted or readily available to most people. We’re seeing plant-based products fill up supermarket shelves, for example, but they are often more expensive than their planet-damaging alternatives. Drought-resistant agriculture is on the up, yes, as is hydroponics and vertical farming, and a focus on innovative biodegradable materials for packaging. But these options still feel beyond the average person’s understanding or interest and their uptake pales in comparison to widespread industrial methods.

Yet, there is a necessary need for those choices to be hastily adopted. The effect of climate change on how and what we eat will be huge, with more frequent flooding, storms and droughts disrupting traditional production. It’s a vicious cycle too, as food production is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (meat accounts for nearly 60 per cent of all greenhouse gases from food production) and when you factor in waste and overconsumption, it's a pretty grim picture.

For María Fuentenebro and Mario Mimoso of Madrid-based studio Sharp & Sour, who focus on shaping the futures of food through design, it’s a fascinating field to be working in. However, this feeling of flux resonates, as Mario remarks: “On one hand we still have these unhealthy, unethical brands from an already gone past, and on the other hand we’re on the verge of a revolution in the food industry.” This in-between-moment also raises questions around the role of the designer within this fraught system. Designers create products, systems and infrastructures and then visualise their work through tempting packaging and hunger-inducing marketing campaigns. In fact, when we question what it will take to turn the tables on the food industry and lead us to a place where our consumption no longer negatively impacts the planet and non-human life, the answer, potentially, is design.

Bruce Mau is a designer and educator with a wealth of experience. Throughout his career, he’s written and/or designed over 200 books, including the seminal S, M, L, XL in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas. He’s the founder of Bruce Mau Design, a creative studio that has worked with an enviable list of clients including MoMA, Adidas, Netflix and MTV. One project, in particular, though, had a profound impact on how Bruce looks at the world. In an exhibition and book called Massive Change, he questioned whether good design could solve humanity’s biggest problems. The project was so inspiring that he then launched a creative consultancy, the Massive Change Network, alongside his wife Aiyemobisi “Bisi” Williams, a strategist. The studio’s mission is simple and clear: to use design to create a better future.

Bruce is staunch in his belief that to truly tackle the crisis we are currently facing, we need to utilise the power of markets – and, fundamentally, that means collaborating with, or at least getting in the room with, organisations and institutions that historically have had the most negative impact on our planet. As a Canadian, Bruce admits he’s predisposed to align with the political left, but during his research for Massive Change was bowled over by the abhorrent but also inspiring work happening at each end of the political spectrum. “I realised that there really is a new political axis developing, which is not about left and right, it’s about forward and backward. And I am committed to forward because there is no backward… I want to use all the mechanisms of social institutions, and all the mechanisms of market forces. I want to use the whole spectrum to move forward.”

Take Bruce’s work with Coca-Cola, a company that many within the activist space would refuse to work with. For Bruce, however, it was an opportunity. “I remember when I started working with them, a lot of my friends were curious,” he recalls. “The reason I did it was that I knew that if we were able to really move Coca-Cola in the right direction, that thousands of companies would follow. We think of Coca-Cola as a monolithic and singular thing. But it’s not, it’s actually an alliance of thousands of companies, and many thousands more will simply follow because Coca-Cola is doing something.” Under the banner of “Refresh, Recycle, Reuse” Massive Change Network designed a system of upcycling 111 Coca-Cola bottles into a sustainable chair, the 111 Navy Chair (a nearly indestructible Navy Chair of the Second World War that is still selling well today). What the studio really did, however, was design the potential for the conglomerate to become a leader in sustainability – it planted the seed for change. But how did it do it? When working with Coca-Cola leadership, Bruce advised them to not tell anyone about what they were doing; to do the opposite of what Coca-Cola always does and not utilise its marketing machine. Take action, then talk about it.

This approach is at the core of Bebel Abreu’s work. The director of What Design Can Do (WDCD) São Paulo, Bebel also co-founded the studio Mandacaru with her sister in 2007. AT WDCD, she’s been responsible for several live events and “challenges”, notably the No Waste Challenge launched earlier this year. This kind of work promotes tangible outcomes, not hypothesis’, which is the whole point, Bebel explains: “WDCD has a very interesting approach,” she says, “don’t complain, just do something to solve what needs to change.” She adds that “a beautiful part of being a designer is to understand that I am part of something bigger. I have the ability to understand the big picture and how the pieces fit together,” but it's important to remember that behind all good ideas is a designer. What’s more, “a good idea in the drawer is nothing… You have to act!”

Bruce’s project with Coca-Cola is testament that this approach works as, once it was out in the world, other companies very quickly followed suit – McDonald’s was almost immediate, he tells us. “McDonald’s is still a fast-food company. But it’s beginning to shift its production in a way that is more and more sustainable. And so designers have to be there. That’s not going to happen if the people who have the capacity to show them the future are not in the game. I’m willing to take the critique in order for the impact.” This attitude acknowledges the fact that “unethical and unsustainable brands,” it seems, are here to stay. So is it really feasible to suggest that designers never work with them? Probably not. Maria explains that, for Sharp & Sour, “it all depends on how unethical these brands are: there are some brands we would never work for, no matter what, but it all depends on the situation. In the end, we cannot escape capitalism, and we all need to pay our bills.”

In a book titled MC24: Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in your Life and Work, the designer sets out the 24 principles that are at the core of his philosophy. One principle that feels particularly pertinent to this conversation is “always search for the worst”. “It comes from the insight that designers have a kind of inverse relationship with trouble,” he says. “When everything is good, we’re not needed. When things are bad, that’s really awesome for us, that’s a big opportunity.” In turn, he encourages every designer to seek out the worst things they can contribute to because that’s where they can have the biggest impact. When working with those companies, try to think about what exactly is stopping them from changing and then employ empathy to prove why massive change is necessary. Of all the jobs, designers have what Bruce calls an almost “shamanistic ability to show people the future.” Most designers take that for granted but when you pitch in an idea, you are allowing the person in front of you to envision the future and you can shape what that future will be. “That’s the power that designers have. And I think we mostly squander it,” Bruce adds. “We don’t realise how powerful we are.”

Mario echoes this idea, explaining that he’s always thought “it’s more practical and effective to fight from the inside.” When working with brands that perhaps don’t align perfectly with your values, he suggests trying to educate first and, if that doesn’t work, try to show a client that the ethical route is actually the most profitable one. “In the end, more often than not it all comes down to money. It is also a smart move: if you refuse the job, someone else will accept it and you’d have lost the opportunity to make a difference. Instead, if you take the job and try to leave your mark on it, even if it is a small one, then that’s already more than nothing.” Bebel on the other hand feels it’s an issue that goes beyond design: “I believe all people (designers included) should boycott unethical brands – the money naturally plays a huge role in the company's decisions.” She does, however, add that “it is very handy to have creatives to implement changes.”

While there’s a sense that being in the room with the powers at be within some of these typically unethical companies is important, is there something to be said about actually learning from them? Reel off what you believe to be the top ten most iconic logos or brand visual identities and I’ll bet the Golden Arches, the Nike tick, the Starbucks mermaid rank among them. Clearly, these brands are getting something right when it comes to branding and marketing. If options that were less damaging (even beneficial) to the planet were packaged up in the same way, would we be facing a less dismal future?