Jens Bringsjord
You're listening to Design Atlas Season four.

Megan Luedke
Have you ever wondered what it truly means to be a sustainable host in today's world? On today's episode of the Design Atlas Podcast, we're sitting down with remarkable individual who not only chairs the graphic design department at the Maryland Institute College of Art, but proudly wears the hat of a sustainability designer.

Jens Bringsjord
Meet Christian Bernard, a man with a passion for design and a commitment to sustainability. Throughout this episode, we wanted to pose a question what does it mean to live and breathe sustainability in the midst of historic preservation? Join us as we unravel Christian's story and discover what it truly means to be a sustainable asset.

Kristian Bjørnard
Yeah, so I grew up in Northfield. When I was a kid, we moved around like until I was seven. We moved around. We lived in Chicago, we lived in Detroit. We lived, out in San Francisco. And then my dad got a job in Faribault, Minnesota, helping start this new glass, high tech glass factory where they were doing, like, anti-reflective coatings and, like, super high reflection mirrors and things like that.

Kristian Bjørnard
And so, he ended up sort of like helping run that factory, which was called fire tech for like, almost 20 years. And so anyway, so manly grew up there. and it's sort of, you know, like it's cornfields and pig farms. And then to liberal arts colleges that draw like some of the smartest people on earth, to them, to the middle of nowhere Minnesota.

Kristian Bjørnard
And I think that's being a kid. It was like the 90s. And, you know, we were just like, ride bikes and go hang out in the woods and like, cut across fields. And I don't remember, like doing a lot other than playing Lego and like being outside. So, and I think also sort of like being a kid in the rural Midwest, even, I don't know, even by the time I was in middle school, we were allowed to like, ride our bikes to school, even though it was probably like 3 or 4 miles miles away.

Kristian Bjørnard
And so I've just always been like an outside cyclist kind of person. and that sort of like, maintained until now. Like I still bike everywhere as a, as a 40 year old adult, I was in band and choir and was always like painting and drawing, and I was like really good friends with the art teacher at in high school.

Kristian Bjørnard
and I think I remember this didn't happen very often at Northfield High School, but I was like the assistant, the teaching assistant for the art classes. when I was a senior. And I just remember, like, all I would do is, like, sit in the art professor's office or the art teacher's office and, like, listen to the Velvet Underground eyes on his stereo, and occasionally, like, go, like, get paint or paper for somebody.

Kristian Bjørnard
that just seemed like a dream scenario. I could just listen to music and, like, paint and draw. even as a high school, high school kid. I mean, I had a lot of friends also played, like, Dungeons and Dragons and magic cards and things like that. So we would, I would like, draw people their own illustrations for their favorite magic card or like, try to make figure out what their character looks like for for Dungeons and Dragons.

Megan Luedke
Kristian's initial passion wasn't in design, or so he thought. He first thought it was physics that called to him, and at this point in time, pursuing a degree in physics seemed like the logical choice. He found himself immersed in the world of equations and scientific exploration, partially influenced by his father, an engineer, and his uncle who shared the same professional path.

Megan Luedke
It appeared to be the road to a secure job, a notion he thought crucial at the time. However, despite the seemingly pragmatic choice, his college years were marked by a sense of discontent. The pursuit of physics left him feeling somewhat unfulfilled and, dare I say, miserable. It became apparent that there was a misalignment between Christian's academic path and his true calling.

Kristian Bjørnard
I had this math professor who was like, you know, and he was also, in the jazz band at the school. He helped lead the jazz band in that at Kalamazoo. And he's like, you know, you're seemed to be really struggling in this class, and you're like, this is too advanced of a math class for you to have gotten here.

Kristian Bjørnard
If you can't do this, if you can't actually do this. So the struggle is like a purely internal struggle that you're having. Maybe you just shouldn't be doing like math and science stuff. You mean that I can stop? I guess I could change my mind. he's like, yeah, I mean, I, you know, the, the painting studio.

Kristian Bjørnard
I was still taking art class because, I mean, it was a liberal arts school, so you still had to have a certain number of credits that were art or theater or something as well. So I would I would see him sometimes in the music and art building. He's like, I see you over there. You're like there all the time painting and in the photo studio, like, why aren't you just taking?

Kristian Bjørnard
Why aren't you just an art major instead? And I that it was just like, oh my gosh, like, yeah, why am I not just an art major? Instead? And so I guess the I went and talked to my advisor like the next week and went on study abroad to France, and it was like, when I come back, I'm not going to be, physics major anymore.

Kristian Bjørnard
Is that going to matter? And there, you know, it just it didn't matter. Like, I could fit all the other art credits in that I needed. And so senior year, all I did was take painting and drawing and a skull and sculpture and some art history classes that I was missing. And it was just like the best possible way to end, my time as a, as an undergrad.

Kristian Bjørnard
but so anyway, the graphic design connection to me was sort of like this. The art and design, the art that I sort of felt like I was interested in, was. The kind of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein pop art kind of stuff from the 60s and, and 70s. And then I got really into conceptual artists like solar and, Nancy Holt, the kind of like New York minimalist, scene and that idea that you would, like, write a sentence or, like, set out instructions and that would be like, could just be followed and replicated, like, really fit into my idea of, like, I was good at math and physics, but like, how

Kristian Bjørnard
could I apply that kind of logic or technical perfection to something? Like what? What I was painting or what I was drawing? and so then when I got done with school, the place where that seemed like it intersected and was a job was sort of these graphic design positions, which I think I mostly found out about just because the library had got print print magazine and how and things like that, that I would just like look through when I was kind of killing time in the library anyway, that it just really seemed to click once I finally kind of decided math physics wasn't the thing I had to do.

Kristian Bjørnard
But it could be you could be like mentally useful. Still. Afterwards.

Jens Bringsjord
After receiving the cap and gown, his college journey led him back to the familiar streets of Northfield, Minnesota. It continued to be a period of self-discovery and reflection.

Kristian Bjørnard
I moved back home after college and was working at this landscape company that I had worked at. In between the summers, just because I still wasn't exactly sure what to do. And I actually liked MIT's The Job. It was just like being outside all the time.

Megan Luedke
Following his time managing the landscaping crews through the remainder of that summer, Pershing decided it was time for a change. His next destination, the vibrant city of San Francisco. Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't the typical pilgrimage to the tech Mecca that you might expect. Instead, it was a quest to discover something more, to unearth a new chapter in the ever evolving narrative of his journey.

Kristian Bjørnard
It wasn't really like the tech Mecca. Yeah, where everybody went to go find a tech job. It was sort of like right before that became the thing to do. and so I had some friends that had moved out there that were just like working at galleries, and just thought maybe I could find some stuff to do.

Kristian Bjørnard
It turned out that it was, like, really hard to have a painting, like, mainly like a painting portfolio and apply to graphic design jobs in a city like San Francisco, where, like, there were a ton of real graphic design people. so I ended up just doing some, like, odd things out there for a little while and then moved back, like when my money ran out, just kind of like moved back to, Northfield to work at the landscape company again.

Kristian Bjørnard
But I was designing there. Like, we know you want to do design, like graphic design stuff, so you can design all of our, like, newspaper ads, and you can make new hang tags for the plants and stuff like that. So, so I kind of like, got to start having some like real projects to show people after that. my mom ran a bakery in town for a while, and so I was like, designing this stuff for her bakery.

Kristian Bjørnard
and so once I sort of, like, started to have some things like that together. then I started was able to kind of like, get some things in Minneapolis that kind of became the design design stuff.

Jens Bringsjord
In the course of his journey, Christian stumbled upon Aiga events, a discovery that would shape the trajectory of his career path. During one of these events, he encountered a fellow design enthusiast, marking the beginning of a conversation that would unfold at the end of a captivating Aiga meetup.

Kristian Bjørnard
and he's like, you don't really seem like the rest of the people that are here. like, you know, you don't look like you work at a design agency. and I was like, no, I, I just do my own thing. I've been working with these bands in town, and I'm actually trying to find a more serious design job.

Kristian Bjørnard
And so then I just, like, kept, you know, we had a good conversation about the bands that he liked. and I just kept seeing him places. And every time I'm like, would go up and be like, hey, do you have anything for me to work on? because he was he also did a lot of publication design.

Kristian Bjørnard
I was like, I'd really like to get to try to design some books. here are some of my favorite books, like design books. And anyway, with a shared love of the Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bring hers, he was willing to take a chance on, like, starting to give me some projects. And so that was like my first real design studio job, sort of working at Sean's studio.

Kristian Bjørnard
Anyway, we did a bunch of cool book projects. I think I worked for him for a couple of years, and then I met some guys in Minneapolis that were making their own biodiesel. And this sort of coincided with maybe it was Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth documentary had come out and like, I was just like I was swearing off fossil fuels and I was I was gonna only bike everywhere.

Kristian Bjørnard
And but I did I still thought it might be cool to have like, a car sometimes. So. Like what? What kind of what could I do to not have to have a fossil fuel car? And so I started going to these workshops about making your own biodiesel and converting your an old diesel to run on vegetable oil. and it just ended up sort of making friends with the guys that were running these workshops who were called Sundays Energy, and they were expanding their biodiesel making business to include making websites for because because basically, like all of these, there are these small businesses in the Twin Cities who, you know, like had kind of like

Kristian Bjørnard
green business plans and the owners were coming to get to either buy biodiesel from them or have them help them convert their cars to vegetable oil. And they're like, oh, well, we're also looking for like somebody to make a catalog for our conference or somebody who can build our organization a new website. And they were like, well, we could do all that stuff to, what if there's not anyone in the cities that is like, sort of like a green business offering those services?

Kristian Bjørnard
Like, why don't we just start offering those as well? Because we already have the customers. So they knew that I did some design stuff from our conversations. They sort of asked me to start help helping them work on those kinds of projects. And anyway, it just was a really like, cool, fortuitous meeting where we kind of just had fun making solar powered websites back when it was like, really hard to make a solar powered web website.

Kristian Bjørnard
Like we ran the the studio on offset wind credits, which I think we were like. It felt like we were pretty ahead of the curve on on doing stuff like that, but sort of like through finding those guys and sort of like trying to do all of my own work. I kind of realized, like how much stuff I didn't really know about, about design or that, like, I kept having questions about the ethics or a theory, sort of like theoretical discourse behind, like how you made certain kinds of decisions from a more like, how do these esthetics match the the thinking behind this and aren't just like replicating the status quo esthetics.

Jens Bringsjord
Fueled by a newfound passion, the desire to delve deeper into the world of graphic design became a driving force. The natural next step was to pursue graduate studies in this field, setting the stage for a transformative chapter. This journey led him to the vibrant city of Baltimore, where Christian enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art, which began as a pursuit of knowledge involved into a role reversal as he transitioned from a graduate student to a professor at the very institute that fueled his artistic growth.

Jens Bringsjord
Teaching became a symbiotic experience for him, with each class contributing to a rich tapestry of learning and collaboration.

Kristian Bjørnard
You know, I mean, I have like, had read a lot of design history books at the time. So it wasn't like I was like unaware of modernism or the bow House or anything else, but I, I didn't sort of like, already have that preconceived way of making things. And so that also meant that, like, sometimes I would present things where people would ask, like, is this even a graphic design project?

Kristian Bjørnard
I don't know, I guess I got pretty good at like being not self-conscious about that. By the end.

Megan Luedke
Embracing the spirit of independence, Christian embarked on a freelancing journey, weaving his design expertise into the dynamic tapestry of Baltimore's creative landscape. The decision to stay in Baltimore was a natural one, given the city's thriving creative scene and the ease with which freelance opportunities presented themselves. At the same time as he was freelancing, the chair of the university department recognized the need for additional expertise and extended an invitation for him to step into the role of a professor anyway.

Kristian Bjørnard
So just because I had hung around, I got asked to teach one of these classes. I was available during the day and I never really thought about it. I had never gone to grad school to to teach. Like, that wasn't ever really part of my thinking. Thinking. and so I said yes to this. I think it was a yeah, it was a motion class because we were still doing things in flash, just like the death rattle of flash.

Kristian Bjørnard
And I was like, Holy crap, this is actually super fun. and I can the, the things that I was missing from grad school to where like being able to kind of like ask people harder questions or try things that might not work but might progress your your practice or your thinking about design forward. I was able to do, in the context of that class that were much harder to do in the context of a client project, you know, like, and so, yeah, just, I got a kick out of it and told Brackett horn the chair at the time that I would love to keep teaching classes if there were more that

Kristian Bjørnard
came up. And, I just there never went a term did not go by after that where I didn't teach at least one class. And then one year, the there was, and a full time opening that opened up. And I just decided that, you know, I had been enjoying it again to the point where, like, I needed to either decide I needed to go all in on my studio because that was had grown pretty, pretty large.

Kristian Bjørnard
and kind of like, stop teaching because I was getting too hard to fit. Teaching, like being, like, fully prepared for teaching with trying to run a full time studio by myself. I was kind of thinking about having to say that I couldn't teach anymore when one of the when a full time position of of they're actually hiring like three people all at all at once, so seemed like a good opportunity to kind of try to try to get in.

Kristian Bjørnard
and so that was 2000. What year? That was like 2015 maybe. and so I've been teaching full time since then. I still teach some of the motion or interactive kind of classes, usually the introductory ones, where they can be more about the the concepts and techniques and can still be applicable to like other kinds of work a student might do, but give you enough of a grounding and a foundation that like, you can really easily jump into the advanced classes.

Kristian Bjørnard
or even like an internship in that realm and kind of like be prepared to seem like you know what you're doing.

Jens Bringsjord
In an unexpected turn of events, the birth of an environmental circular economy class emerged organically. A venture that wasn't initially intended to be a personal teaching moment. The class designed it to evolve with each passing year, endeavored to encapsulate the essence of a shifting landscape, its core focus line, and exploring the intricate dance between design and the principles of a circular economy.

Jens Bringsjord
Delving into the nuanced ways designers can intentionally integrate circular economy concepts into their graphic design endeavors, irrespective of whether the client shares the same environmental conscientiousness.

Kristian Bjørnard
And then just sort of like how what other questions you need to ask if you're starting a project, when you're starting a project that makes it a sustainable graphic design project, as opposed to just a status quo graphic design project, like, should you make this at all? You're like, maybe that should be the first question you ask every single time you do any project.

Kristian Bjørnard
and not just like, how do you want me to do this? Or how should we do this? But just like, should we do it?

Megan Luedke
Delving into the essence of sustainable graphic design, the quest for a definition led Christian to a profound insight inspired by John Aaron Feld. According to Aaron Feld, sustainability hinges on a crucial first step defining what it is that we aim to sustain. For him, sustainability embodies the idea that all life on earth should flourish. Collective fully. This nuanced perspective lays the foundation for a definition that extends beyond the traditional boundaries, bringing together a holistic vision where the thriving of every facet of life is interconnected.

Kristian Bjørnard
And that's what sustainability is for him. And I think, Bruce now, when he was working on massive Change, is kind of like a similar way that they defined it was like, the welfare of all life was the goal of the Massive Change project. And so if we use that kind of idea that, like all life on Earth, has to succeed together as what we want to sustain, then like sustainable graphic design has to account for, like, not just what this ad banner needs to look like, but like, what does this ad banner need to look like?

Kristian Bjørnard
If all life is flourishing, you know, again, it might beg the question of like, do we need to make this ad banner at all? But it might change also what how you make the ad banner or what the ad banner also tries to look like.

Megan Luedke
The quest for defining the visual embodiment of sustainable design led Christian on a transformative journey. During his time in grad school, in the pursuit of answering the question, what does sustainable graphic design look like, he found himself immersed in a creative exploration. This period marked a pivotal moment where he not only conceptualized, but visualized numerous projects attempting to encapsulate the essence of sustainable graphic design.

Megan Luedke
Driven by a desire to go beyond mere visualization, he delved into a research project that analyzed companies claiming to adopt greener, sustainable practices in the late 2000s. The objective was clear uncover the visual language and solutions employed by these companies.

Kristian Bjørnard
I ended up kind of like making these categories of like what the, the, these esthetic groupings of of things. And so it was like this idea that things just look the same and maybe have there's like other ideals or materials that went into making them, but they're, they're not trying to look different because they just kind of like sit on the shelf with everything else or like look like a big, successful, important company, like everything else.

Kristian Bjørnard
So that's sort of like was another one. It like it tries to look like it's more connected to the earth or nature or with like more environmentally friendly materials. And that kind of like makes it perhaps look esthetically less good. but like, where is its environmentalism on its sleeve? A little bit more then I thought that another kind of like main grouping where these things that intentionally just tried to be different looking, they were like avant garde or weird, and it was because they're sort of like trying to rally against whatever the prevailing capitalist systems were, or they're trying out radically new materials, plastic paper that could be washed off and like reused as

Kristian Bjørnard
paper again or things like that to sort of like made them materially or esthetically like very fundamentally different from the things around them because of some sustainability choice. And then my last sort of category was just like, it doesn't exist. And initially this category was like a pessimistic category, like all the design does is produce trash. Like if you're a graphic designer and you it wasn't a book cover or like a record sleeve, like that thing probably was trash pretty quickly after somebody got it, that that's the sort of like how I was feeling, having done all this work.

Kristian Bjørnard
And so that sort of like sent me off on a kind of like other tangent for a while where I was like, not. I was like, I'm not going to make anything, I'm only going to write instructions and people can make their own stuff. Continuing to think about that, or like continuing to try to find ways to not to not make things to like communicate things with signs without having to, like, make new signs.

Kristian Bjørnard
I kind of hit upon this idea, which I was like, oh, instead of it does not exist, meaning that it is impossible, it does not exist means that it embraces that idea that it probably will be trash and like decides to not be trash by how do we like, bring things together to communicate the message in the way that it needs to be communicated.

Kristian Bjørnard
And then those things can like go back to whatever they were or like be easily processed, you know, like be raw materials for something else afterwards. Two main projects in grad school that I made that like tried to embrace that. I thought, like visualize that poster project that I made was just sort of like these aphorisms of sustainability they were then printed on.

Kristian Bjørnard
I just like, printed them over an old newspaper that we had made for some other visiting works artist workshop.

Jens Bringsjord
The term sustainable list might roll off the tongue a bit easier, and perhaps it makes more straightforward sense. But sometimes embracing a little in linguistics, challenge can be a clever choice. Back when Kristian was a grad student, he found the term intriguing, being a sustainable list, as he defined it then goes beyond the conventional approach of preserving the environment.

Jens Bringsjord
It's about undertaking a holistic mission, ensuring the safeguarding and preservation of not just our ecological systems, but extending the care to our social and economic systems as well. It's a commitment to creating, and, if necessary, reinventing systems that harmonize with both the natural and social order.

Kristian Bjørnard
And then as like an abstract framework of principles, the they tried to I was trying to be agnostic of like what you might be applying them to. So it was like thinking about things like agility and the ability to kind of be flexible, and respond, like be be prepared to respond to changing situations because we're like entering a time where, like a lot will be changing and at as new solutions come up or like friction, old systems have friction with, with like new ideas that we will have to be continuously kind of like finding new ways to, adapt agility, comfort with change.

Kristian Bjørnard
working with, like, using constraints as useful as help in, in what you're deciding, like thinking more about like the durability or the ephemeral ephemerality of the, the thing that you're designing or the thing that you're designing for, embracing things like entropy and like accepting that like things kind of once the universe wants to head towards chaos.

Kristian Bjørnard
And so maybe the systems that we've made that are all about like condensing energy into, like, super ordered structures, isn't the best way to, like, have things have a really long have longevity. I guess. And then also just like embracing services over objects, being better at understand or like using systems both like our invented systems, but also sort of like how do our events and systems actually, like, fit into the larger natural systems, which are really what are important to kind of jive to jive with?

Kristian Bjørnard
How do you just leave your front door every morning and just sort of say the way that I'm going to act today can, like, help point at least my neighborhood or like my office or wherever, like on this path, like I'm going to visually model this behavior that I think we need to get us to wherever version of, of a sustainable all like flourishing together world that you sort of feel like we need to get to.

Kristian Bjørnard
And so yeah, just like if your daily life output and your creative output are just like all the lines of that, how are they all signaling your vision of of what the future might be instead.

Megan Luedke
From the landscapes of Minnesota to the bustling city of San Francisco and finally to the halls of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Christian's narrative is not just a story of personal growth, but a testament to the ever changing landscape of the design world. Whether it's crafting a curriculum around the circular economy or decoding the visual language of sustainable design, Christian's insights have illuminated the path for those seeking a harmonious balance between creativity and consciousness.

Megan Luedke
As we wrap up this episode, let Christian's journey inspire you to embrace the complexities of sustainability, challenge the status quo, and weave your own narrative into the ever evolving tapestry of design.