Photo courtesy of PLB-Designs
Katy Gathright is the co-founder of Designed Good, a new community that curates the best in design and social good. She graduated from Williams College in 2012 and is excited to be engaging other millennials around the idea of products that make a difference.
When I began working on Designed Good last spring, I was excited to work on a project that carried personal meaning. Imran Khoja, my close friend and co-founder, had been relaying his vision to me since we were studying abroad our junior year. But even though I was attentive to Designed Good’s capacity for social change, I wasn’t prepared for the more unexpected connections we’ve made along the way.
Designed Good is a place where we feature awesome and innovative products that are also good for the world. We’re interested in finding that key intersection between design and social good – largely because we believe that products that are designed intentionally have this great potential for solving social challenges. We pair all of our products with stories about how they are making a difference. Whether the clothing is made from sustainable materials or the gadget was manufactured by a cause-driven brand, we are committed to showcasing the most awesome products that epitomize two things: people’s creativity and well, how fun it is to be a conscious consumer.
So Designed Good was born of this concept of connections – connecting people who love to engage with new ideas online with the designers, brands, and artisans who have discovered avenues to social change.
So I always thought our commitment to connections and expanding our community would be mostly theoretical. You know – things to talk about at conferences, things for our website copy, things to keep in brainstorming GoogleDocs. But last month, we reached out to a French-Canadian graphic designer, Pier-Luk Bouthillier, in hopes of featuring his T-shirts on our website.
We interview all of the people whose work we feature, so Imran scheduled a time for me to Skype Pier-Luk. I always prepare questions before interviews, but soon my scheduled appointment turned into a conversation without agenda – and I learned about his trips abroad that taught him about sweatshop working conditions, his views on deforestation in Quebec, and the value of designing with water-based inks, which don’t contain chemicals that are harmful to humans or the environment.
I learned that just seeing his “Tree-cycle” T-shirt on the PLB Designs website and actually talking to Pier-Luk about why he wants to create designs that communicate his ideals are completely different.
I realized that building an online community through Designed Good is not only a chance to connect consumers with our idea, but also an opportunity to relate to the people whose stories we want to tell.
When Imran and I went about picking the individual PLB shirts that we wanted to feature on Designed Good, we could do so knowing which were the designer’s favorites and why. And finalizing the details of the PLB sales feature came in the form of Imran’s broken French floating through our office as they talked about release dates and shipping logistics.
These connections are also a way of staying true to ourselves. In a tech startup, it’s easy to get caught up in the web design and the user experience of Designed Good. But since our ideas began with relating to our friends and how fun it is to discover these products in the first place, it makes sense to put stock in the conversations we have with people along the way.
We often strategize about members discovering products on our site and what that experience will feel like for them. I could write a whole book about the bigger picture I’m discovering as 2012 graduate and startup co-founder. Including a few words of French.