Fair Trade and Design
Lynsey Hutchison
Textiles
Fair trade is a globally recognised form of trading that’s aims and goals is to reform and develop new means of trading which offers a fairer alternative to the producers in developing countries. These means of trading try to ensure an equal and fair method of trading between the businesses and the producers. Fair trade tries to ensure certain standards which include fair minimum price which is agreed with the producer and fair pay, improved working conditions. Fair trade also provides a fair-trade premium which can be used to invest to improve the social, economic and environmental development for the producers. Another benefit and commitment of fair-trade is to try and create a partnership between the producers and the traders in order to create a long term, beneficial trading method to help create security for the producer and their businesses. This then enabling these countries and the producers to achieve substantiality, and environmentally and economic growth, which is the overall goal in order help these producing country to develop.
“It is an entirely different way of doing business, where the objective is not profit at any cost, but to help people in the world's most marginalised communities escape poverty and promote sustainability.”(People tree,2010)
History
The idea of Fair trade goes back to the 1940’s, when organisation and different religious groups began buying hand made crafts and goods directly from the farmers and producers in the developing countries in the south, for above market prices. This was in response to the globalisation and corporate methods of trading, and to bring “Fairness” back to trading. As this movement towards fairness and change began to grow and increase and become more established there began to open shops to trade in that were known as “world Shops”. There was an increase in the number of world shops other methods of fair trading being opened, along with the number of organisations committed to providing fair trade, and by the 1980’s official certifiable standards and labelling were established. The introduction of the labelling system saw a shift in rise of fair trade and for the fair trade movement, as it greatly increased the level of availability to fair trade goods and products and awareness of fair trade and helped to establish it as a new, fair method of trading. The first fair trade formal labelling scheme was established in the late 1980’s by a Dutch development agency called “Solidaridad”. In 1997 the fair trade labelling organisation went international and the fair trade logo was established in Britain. This fair trade labelling organisation known as (FLO), this was then split in to two different organisations called FLO and FLO-CERT. The FLO organisations aims are to set the standards for fair trade and facilitate and provide support for the producing businesses. The FLO-CERT organisation is there to inspect and certify the producing organisations, as well as carrying out audits on the traders to ensure the standards are been maintained.
“Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade” (Raynolds,2007)
The first leading supermarket in the UK the supply their own brand of fair trade products was the Co-operative and they have made it a main goal and objective to achieve and maintain fair trade standards and now sell over 265 fair trade products in their store.
Fair Trade and Design
In terms of fair trade and design the basic idea is that design has a big part to play in promoting fair trade and creating awareness, as well as looking at the actual design process of products and outcomes that are produced through fair trade means could increase and improve the ways that fair trade products are produced and traded. Advertising is used to increase and promote consumers and businesses to buy and trade using fair trade products and this is where design plays an important role. Through advertising and branding of fair trade products and the fair trade logo it appeals to the conscious consumer through the use of colour, design and message that the it transcends, it is powerful in its design in persuading people to purchase these products. The design of the fair trade logo was taken on by the fair trade foundation in 2002 and has established itself as a brand that consumer associate with fairness, happiness and economic growth for developing countries. The actual logo itself is blue, green, white and black and in using these colours they have created a message, the green leaves and grass representing growth and the blue of the sky showing a brighter, more prosperis future, therefore allowing the consumer to feel that by buying these products they are helping to improve people’s lives and allowing them to grow. The textile industry is one of the lowest in terms of contributing to producing fair trade products;
“More than 50 per cent of coffee sold in the UK is fair trade, but in clothing it is less than one per cent.”(Haughton,2010)
However although this is the case, it is also an area where there is an emphasise on increasing the numbers and use of fair-trade products and both consumers and designers are becoming more and more conscious and concerned about developing new idea to reform the way they design, the materials they use and looking for new ways of working with this is becoming a big thing in the textile industry. This is shown by the creation of the ethical fashion forum website which aims to encourage consumers and designer to be more aware of the issues around fair-trade. They have even developed a competition entitled the “Innovation” award which looks for young designers to come up with new, exciting and unique methods to incorporate fair trade textiles in their work and designs. The main area of textile working with fair trade is in the cotton production industry.
There are many organisations and business that are solely concerned with only trading with fair trade products and make it there aim to increase the use of fair trade, an example of this is a website called ‘People Tree’, that is a fashion website that only uses fair trade products and processes.
“For every beautiful garment People Tree makes, there's an equally
beautiful change happening somewhere in the world.”(People Tree)
The people tree company also works along with around 50 fair trade organisations, all of which have different methods and means in which to achieve help and support for the developing countries. People tree itself offers 50% advance payments for orders to allow them finance to produce the goods. In terms of design the have designed a framework to enable there designer to design beautiful clothing that are also fair trade as they have used creative ways of incorporating the skills of the workers.
This is another way and issue of looking at fair trade and design the idea of designing to enable the use of fair trade methods to produce products, for example reduce the need for big machinery and expensive methods of production and built on the skills and crafts of the people and enable more hand craft and less expensive methods of production for poorer producer businesses.
