Lance Hosey was an author that I came to consider a friend-outside of, and sometimes in spite of, our work on his book. In The Shape of Green, Lance argued that beauty is an environmental imperative. Obviously, that meant that the book had to be beautiful, and Lance had many thoughts about what that meant.

Last week, after I learned of his death, I pulled up the many, many emails related to the design of his book cover and interior. The emails reminded me of Lance's kindness, even at the most difficult points in the process; the fact that he won over the cover designer after a very rocky start; and that anyone in the design field I talked to about the project seemed to know, respect, and love Lance.

This past spring, Lance and I discussed the possibility of a new edition of his book for the tenth anniversary of its publication next year. Since his ideas are still very relevant, we ultimately determined revisions weren't necessary. But, he said "the big thing is that I'd like to reconsider the design, if you're game".

Lance was always game to talk about design and was passionate about the role of designers in addressing environmental and social challenges. In The Shape of Green epilogue, "A Beauty Manifesto", he presented ten principles for advancing an aesthetics of ecology that ended with "10. Make things better", which Lance did.

For his full obituary, please visit lancehosey.com

To read an excerpt from Lance's book, The Shape of Green, click here.