Wellington design company Alto recently won the innovation award at the regional Get Sustainable Challenge. Alto were rewarded for their invention of 'Good Friday', which, each Friday, allows staff to focus on personal development and nurturing their creative side. Megan Hosking of Alto believes sustainability is the fourth dimension to any design brief. The Big Idea's Isaac Davison speaks to her .Wellington design company Alto recently won the innovation award at the regional Get Sustainable Challenge. Alto were rewarded for their invention of 'Good Friday', which, each Friday, allows staff to focus on personal development and nurturing their creative side. Megan Hosking of Alto believes sustainability is the fourth dimension to any design brief. The Big Idea's Isaac Davison speaks to her .Isaac Davison: Where did you begin in design?
Megan Hosking: I began with a Bachelor of Design degree at Victoria, but began part time work with Shift before I finished studying. At this point you could not do a paper in web design, you could only tag it onto another paper on interactivity - it was a fairly clumsy field which was still being established. So, my majors were interactivity and graphic design.

I was with Shift for about four years, and before leaving I was involved with a project designing the PureNZ website for Tourism New Zealand, which has received local and international awards, and still carries the base design I did four years ago.

At what point did social responsibility enter your thinking? What fuels your desire for sustainability?
I was raised by feminist parents; mother, father and a feminist step-mother, who protested against the Springbok tour, so I have a very strong liberal foundation. I think there is a void in social responsibility in design education. If you wanted to bring your idealism to design school, it was tolerated, but not exactly encouraged.

In a professional studies course at university, which aimed to prime you for your professional life - meeting clients, various business scenarios - we were never encouraged to ask the client "What's that for?", "Who does it serve?", or "Is there a more socially responsible way?". So I have written to the head of Massey to see if they might start introducing sustainability principles into their courses. I think sustainability is the fourth dimension to any design brief. If you're considering budget, timeframe, and all the different parameters of the problem, another parameter is the project's impact socially and environmentally.

Where does sustainability intersect with design?
Alto focuses on visual communication design, but our passion is for the internet because, despite the resources consumed in making computers, the web creates a lot of communication without too much environmental impact. We try to minimise the output of waste by clients, in particular printed materials, because it becomes junk very quickly.

When I started my business in 2001 I considered whether it was possible to have an organisation where growth is not the only objective. It is possible to pride yourself on the experience of your workers and clients? So I was motivated to create a working environment which was taking care of people. That is the moral starting point for Alto.

In the winter of 2004 films like Super Size Me and The Corporation, and Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men brought the insidious nature of corporations into mainstream media. We are now saturated with warnings of peak oil, climate change, soil health problems, water problems. The lovely thing about business it that it has to respond to the market - it is their raison d'etre. The best businesses are aware of the changing nature of the environment, the scarcity of resources. If business continues to work in its current mindset it will lose its margins. Sustainability is not just a f***ing greenie term, it is core to business.

Because of my upbringing, I've been motivated to bring my heart into my work. But sustainability is also strategic thinking - it is getting a business to a sustainable position so that it can still flourish in a changing climate. It is a journey - everyone will get on a different point. If you are Comalco, you get on the 'travelator towards sustainability' at a different place from a bank or a consultancy firm. But once you are on, you are on, toward a journey towards a more sustainable future. Something might emerge that is as profitable as before, but is sustainable and this makes more business sense long term.

The world I see emerging is one in which individuals are increasingly informed. The lovely thing about the information age is that a wealth of information is being amassed in new ways which can help us make informed decisions. Tools are being developed on the internet at the moment to help consumers make really good point of sale decisions based on a whole spectrum of reasons, not merely the cost. They will be able to access a sustainability profile on each product as judged by the consumers and consumer watch organisations.

If this is the age which is emerging, business cannot put on a façade of social responsibility. It will be important for businesses to tidy their back yard, not just their front yard.

Tell me about your 'Good Friday' initiative. What is the connection between sustainability and your relations with staff?
I believe employment is about how you sustain individuals. 'Good Friday' is about acknowledging that staff are humans and that we love and need to have long lunches with our mums, to get our hair cut, to see the doctor, and write long emails to our friend in Canada. Employees do these things anyway, so the initiative proposes that they do these things on a Friday, and keep it to a minimum for the rest of the week. There is no drop in productivity. Staff feel obligated to work, and they know they are trusted.

Friday is my busiest day of the week. I don't do any work for clients on a Friday, but I am a trustee of the Sustainability Trust. Last Friday I was doing some tutoring at Welltec. It is so important to keep ties with our institutions, to keep feeding back our knowledge, and to nurture young designers. I'm always whinging about the designers who come out of design school, so I ask myself what I can contribute to a positive curriculum.

What problems do you face in your approach?
There is a huge Middle New Zealand (comparative to the God-fearing middle America) who are still highly conservative. These 'middle' individuals and companies clutch onto their values until they realise that these values are not serving them anymore.

This is a mechanical worldview in which you can only think about a cog which connects to another cog. Middle New Zealanders are not thinking about a cycle, but a conveyor belt. But if you move into a digital age, and look at web structures, everything is blown out to be much more complex. Web structures are starting to understand connectedness: the furthest point in a web is still connected. This thinking is going to be the prevailing idea but until that happens there will be a dissonance where people cling to their old views.

Your website states that your objective is 'to create a brand that when you cut it open, it bleeds sustainability'. How hard is it for long-established businesses to make a shift to sustainable practices?
It wasn't until 2004 that Alto moved towards building sustainability. Prior to that we had just practiced good ideas for employee relations. The luxury of independent companies (such as Alto) is that your business can make decisions on a whim, and is in a stronger position to make changes quickly, instead of reporting back to a global corporate and going through decision making processes with shareholders.

Moving towards sustainability is easy because you only have to do one thing. If a business can sincerely make a move towards sustainable practice, it will see that it gains momentum and opportunities arise. Sustainability has a bad rap because people think about it being about meanness and necessity, about doing less and reducing. But it could just as easily be about creating abundance and opportunities. I figure it just depends on how we want to look at things. Being an 'Eternal Optimist', I can't help but look for the opportunities. Guilt doesn't have any traction with me.

What is next for Alto? What projects are you involved in?
We tend to attract people who are drawn to our values. We have recently helped with Radio New Zealand's website, and continue to work with EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority).

A fashion business approached us to design their identity, logo and bags. It was not necessarily in line with our values, but in taking it on we asked "are there ways that your business can become broader and more accessible?" and "are there more sustainable ways of doing this?" We found ways to re-use and recycle, minimise waste in the printing process, without the client even recognising that we did anything particularly sustainable.

Design is not simply a service, but a way of giving advice, and there is an opportunity to widen the parameters of a project to deal with impacts like social or environmental.

How is NZ placed in terms of eco-friendly design?
Our New Zealand brand is predicated on being clean green, but New Zealand is actually falling quickly behind. In Europe, people don't use point-of-sale plastic bags because they carry their own bags. In Melbourne there are facilities for recycling on the streets. These are tiny steps but they are statement of understanding about how we need to change. We are not even there yet. It's really disheartening.

If New Zealand were to pioneer sustainable ways of living, and innovate and solve sustainability problems, we could export something that is not physical - knowledge and solutions. New Zealand faces a big question. It must innovate and survive, or be overtaken. I don't say this in a fear-making way. Designers - this is our time. We are going to be gainfully employed over the coming century, remaking everything. Every single thing in our environment has to be redesigned: what an incredible opportunity!

05/10/06