LONDON — If you stopped people on the street and asked them to name a successful design brand, many of them would say Apple. And why not? Apple’s products have won shoals of design prizes. Devotees camp outside its stores in the hope of snapping up its new products. Sales have soared, as has its share price, and whenever Apple executives discuss the reasons for the company’s success, its commitment to design is invariably among them. Yay!


Given Apple’s status as the reigning champion of corporate design, it is not surprising that the design world has speculated frenziedly about the risk of the company losing its design luster since the death of its co-founder, Steven P. Jobs, in October. In the last few days alone, I have listened to one designer predicting confidently that the styling of Nokia’s new smart phones would soon surpass Apple’s, and read an editorial in Creative Review magazine, which cast Microsoft in the Nemesis role by claiming that it may “have edged ahead of Apple in the design stakes” with its new operating software, or “user interfaces” as techies call them.


Rather than being felled by a fatal blow from Nokia, Microsoft or another foe, a likelier scenario is that Apple will suffer the fate of past alpha design brands by declining not dramatically, but gradually, as Braun did after its 1960s and 1970s heyday. Perhaps it will carry on doing the same things in the same way for too long, or slowly lose the qualities that once made its products seem so special. A more enticing possibility is that Apple will falter not by being beaten at its current game, but because one of its rivals achieves something that it has failed to do: by developing digital devices, which not only score highly on the traditional design criteria of aesthetics, efficiency and ease of use, but in terms of their ethical and environmental sensitivity.


Whenever design commentators, like me, reflect on what does — and doesn’t — constitute “good design,” we tend to identify “sustainability” or “responsibility” as an indispensable element. We use those words as shorthand for saying that nothing can be considered to be well-designed if we have reason to feel guilty about any aspect of the way in which it was developed, manufactured, packaged, shipped or sold, and will eventually be disposed of. After all, how can we take pleasure in something that we know — or suspect — of being ecologically damaging, or of causing pain or hardship?


In theory, we cannot, but in practice, most of us do from time to time, however distasteful it is to admit it. Sometimes, we have tried — and failed — to find a guilt-free alternative, but usually it happens because we decide to compromise. Whenever we consider buying something new, consciously or unconsciously, we weigh up different criteria like the product’s cost, usefulness, appeal, whether it pricks our consciences and, if so, how badly. We all have our own lists of “dos” and “don’ts” on the conscience front: For example, I occasionally eat meat, but would never wear fur, making me persona non grata to vegans for the former, and to the Kardashians for the latter. But every so often we conclude that it would be too difficult, expensive or inconvenient to stick to our principles, and settle for something that we know is, at best, less than acceptable. And we are likeliest to do so when buying “tools,” the staple products, like phones, computers and cars on which we have grown to depend.


When it comes to picking a new car, no one can argue plausibly that it is not practicable to find a guilt-free — or significantly less guilty — alternative to a gas-guzzling clunker. Even though the automotive industry shows no sign of producing an energy-efficient vehicle, which is as alluring as, say, the 1955 Citroën DS19 saloon, there are plenty of reasonably affordable and proficient vehicles to choose from.