Skull-A-Day in HOW

My Skull-A-Day project is featured in the current issue of How Magazine as part of the article Daily Inspirations...

Zero-Impact Sea-Tagging

With marketers feverishly trying to co-opt our emerging social media and every inch of the human environment, it's refreshing to meet CURB, the world's first natural media company. Their mission statement is to impact consumers without impacting the environment, using nothing but natural materials, but in doing so they're also double punching my imagination and happiness gland.

According to head of marketing, Peter Kerwood, it cost millions to make the SEALIFE London Aquarium a world-class attraction, while London-based CURB used little more than saltwater and a stencil to market it. "Sea Tagging" as it's called, is as simple as that. Guerilla teams dress in scuba gear created an aquatic sprawl across London, spraying more than two-thousand sea animals on buildings and sidewalks, creating an experiential marketing campaign totally relevant to the Aquarium.

The beauty of this technique is that the salinity of sea water makes it more resistant to evaporation than freshwater meaning they can last for up to hours, and after that you're left with a dusting of sea salt. CURB is the same company that pioneered turf cutting and snow tagging, and the logistical beauty of zero impact campaigns like these: no permits.

Not your average bank.

An amazingly progressive commercial about tolerance from the Argentinian Banco Provincia. It's hard to imagine a bank in the US doing anything nearly as forward thinking...



Thanks Carlos!

Book Review: Forms, Folds, and Sizes 2nd Ed.

Despite the less than enticing title, Forms, Folds, and Sizes (second edition) from Rockport Books is actually one of the most useful texts a designer can have on his/her shelf (and realistically it'll probably be on their desk more than the shelf). The densely packed, but not overly large, book is filled with prety much every technical detail a working designer needs to make sure their work prints, mails, or posts online correctly. From copyright basics, to printing terminology, it contains much more than what the title implies (though that's there too in abundance). There's even a large process color selector section at the back that's worth the price of the book alone. Forms, Folds, and Sizes is really about the stuff that is often breezed over or left entirely out of design education with the assumption that students will figure it out on their own or once they're in the working world. And while there's no beating learning by doing (and making mistakes), there's a lot to be said for getting it right the first time (and saving the pain and expense of getting it wrong on the client's dime). Based on the original edition, by prodigeous design writer Poppy Evans, this new version contains additional sections written with the help of Aaris Sherin on grid design, online design, design jobs, and (most appealing to me) environmentally aware design. The Greening Graphic Design chapter is a handy synthesis of the topics covered in Sherin's book SustainAble, making the book even more useful to the budding socially conscious designer (which really should be all young designers at this point). The one sad irony is that the book has a flexible vinyl cover. From a functional standpoint this makes sense since it will hold up better than a standard cover, considering how much more use this will get than a regular book. From the environmental angle however, this is one of the worst materials in existance and really is a shame that something else couldn't have been found to replace it. I know cost issues are a major factor with these things, but here's hoping the third edition comes with a cover that's as good as the contents within.

Forms, Folds, Sizes (second edition)
Poppy Evans & Aaris Sherin
Rockport Books
$30.00

Has it come to this? Make your own money...

The always entertaining Atypyk has a new product appropriate for the current economy: Color-It-Yourself Money. Hopefully there are some people left who can actually afford to buy these.

How Conference: Extended Early Bird Deadline!

Hey folks, just another reminder that I will be speaking about making a living as a socially conscious designer at this year's How Design Conference in Austin, Texas. They've kindly extended the Early Bird application deadline to May 1st, so you can still get $100 off your entry fees if you register before then. Details are HERE (and don't forget to mention me on the form if you do sign-up!)

Record Store Day!

It's Record Store Day today! Stop reading this and go support your local record store if you still have one!

Heavy Metal in Baghdad

I just saw this documentary about the only heavy metal band in Iraq and was surprised to discover how moving it really was. It gives a glimpse into the reality of day-to-day life in post 9/11 Iraq that definitely needs to be seen by more people in the US...

A literal ocean of plastic bags...

Another great animated short from the folks at Free Range Studios to promote the anti-plastic bag campaign of Save The Bay...

Mascots Strike Back

The Anti Advertising Agency provided the dialog used in this new video as a Creative Commons licensed download four years ago...


Product Placement from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

Tribute to Obama

Mustafa Topaloglu is a Turkish folk song singer. He did this song as a tribute to U.S. President Barack Obama. The song is both in Turkish and in English, if you wait 'til the end you'll see subtitles. Enjoy :

Hope - Obama - Tbox

After this ad from the Turkish bank Garanti, it's now the turn of the Turkish clothing brand T-Box to copy Shepard Fairey's poster "Hope".

The ad says : "Hope Dedik". in Turkish, "hop dedik" means "we said : enough !", but with a word play it says "we said : hope". "Our only hope is T-Box".





















By the way, concerning the Garanti ad, President Obama was in Istanbul last week and he must have been surprised to see his portrait like that all over the city.

Linkage: From Self-Erasing Paper to Self-Imposed Homelessness

Xerox's answer to recycling: paper that erases itself! via

Innovative campaign makes you into a homeless person (image shown).

Disney may need to sue themselves for copyright infringement. via

One for the true design geeks: "Helveticaca" Onesies (image shown).

And a few longer articles worth reading...

Ode on the mainstreaming of social entrepreneurship.
and a medicine hunter's support of indigenous cultures.

Mother Jones on the future of sustainable food in the US, fake farmer's markets, and bio-fuels VS rainforests.

To Read

Speaking of books, there's this rather large "to read" pile of work/teaching related ones on my desk that I'm trying to get through before this century is over. I don't have nearly enough time in my schedule to read them as quickly as I'd like, but hopefully I won't add too many more before I whittle this down a bit. In case you're interested, here's what's on the list (the top few are definitely the ones I plan to read sooner than later, after that it's up for grabs)...

• Design Is The Problem by Nathan Shedroff [if you're interested in this one you can get a 15% discount directly from the publisher by using the code REBELLION]
• Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design by Lucienne Roberts
• OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture by Christine Harold
• The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason [which even comes with a remixable Creative Commons licensed logo!]
• The World Is Not For Sale by José Bové & François Dufour
• Mission Accomplished by Christopher Cerf & Victor Navasky
• Profit with Honor by Daniel Yankelovich
• Causewired Tom Watson
• Unmarketable by Anne Elizabeth Moore
• Brand Name Bullies by David Bollier
• Consuming Kids by Susan Linn
• Shameless Exploitation by Paul Newman & A.E. Hotchner
• Silent Theft by David Bollier
• Massive Change by Bruce Mau

Expect reviews as I work my way through. And of course if you plan on buying any of these do try to support your local independent bookstore by ordering it through them whenever possible.

Also please let me know what you thought of these if you've read them already and/or suggest others I should add to the pile (you can see some of the related books I've already read HERE and HERE).

Book Review: Green Graphic Design

Green Graphic Design, by Brian Dougherty of Celery Design Collaborative, is the second new eco-graphics handbook I’ve read in the past year. This is a pretty big deal, considering I’ve spent the previous six years using out-of-date (and often out-of-print) books to introduce the subject to my socially conscious design students. It’s a nice problem to actually have some resources to choose between and while I may have a bit of bias towards Aaris Sherin’s SustainAble, since my own work appears in it, I like to believe that I came at Green Graphic Design with an open mind. However, it is impossible for me to read and review it without comparing the books.
Two of the major advantages of Dougherty’s book are clear from the outset: it’s a smaller-sized paperback, which makes it less of a coffee table book and more useful as a day-to-day manual and it costs nearly half as much.
After a strong introduction, which speaks to the broader idea of socially conscious design, even though it sticks with the term “green design”, the book settles into a fairly solid overview of the issues and techniques of environmental graphic design. In terms of technical information covered, both Green Graphic Design and SustainAble are on fairly equal ground.
Where Green Graphic Design falters, however, is in the question of audience. The text more often than not seems geared towards people who have little or no professional experience. This would be ideal for a student audience, except that the practical examples, the majority of which involve projects for Celery’s large corporate clients, will be most useful to people who are already able make choices about custom pocket folders and mass-produced consumer packaging. Package design seems like something that is better covered in a book on green industrial design (a topic which has many more books already associated with it) and most graphic design students I know won’t be dealing with work at the scale that Celery handles for a long time (if ever).
In the end, Green Graphic Design reads more like an elaborate self-promotion for Celery that is supplemented with some useful information on working environmentally rather than the other way around. The diversity of the projects and voices in SustainAble still make it my primary recommendation, but Green Graphic Design is an acceptable choice for those who are new to the topic, especially if portability and cost are your primary concerns.

Green Graphic Design
by Brian Dougherty
Allworth Press
$24.95

New York Comes Alive

A sweet little live-action animated film using actual interviews of New Yorkers...


The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

Thanks Carlos!

Free Posters for Progressives

Design Action Collective and Inkworks Press are offering free poster design & printing to one lucky progressive organization via their Serve The People Poster Project. Deadline for applications is May 1st...

All you have to do is present an idea, and if selected, Design Action will donate $1000 of design, and Inkworks will print 1000 full color, tabloid sized posters for you use as you wish. For free. Simple as that. The application form can be found here.

Get the full details HERE.

via

Linkage: Cooking with Blockbuster and Pimping the Homeless

Growing your own food and have too much, why not trade with fellow gardeners? Thanks Scott!

PimpThisBum.com written on homeless man's sign makes a real difference. (image shown) via Thanks Russ!

New label to look out for in the coming years: Water Stewardship. via

E-waste recycling done right, in pictures (image shown). Thanks Mim!

Improv Everywhere's April Fool's video ends fooling newscasters who don't do their research.

DIY stove made from Blockbuster drop box. (image shown)

Target Women's hilarious take on Carl's Jr. ads is not to be missed.

Reclaimed Trophies

I was recently hired to design four trophies for the Better Housing Coalition here in Richmond, VA. The organization, which builds housing in the city for people who usually can't afford it, is having their first annual Leadership Awards ceremony in an old wood mill that is in the process of being transformed into a mixed-use community. In the spirit of the transformation I was invited to scavenge materials that were left over from the previous owners to create the trophies. They are entirely made from the reclaimed materials and finished with water-based stains and coatings. Titles and descriptions of each award were used as inspiration for the designs...


Creative Collaborator - Individual or entity that encourages and participates in community enhancing collaborations.























Changer of Lives - Individual or entity that strengthens families and improves lives within Greater Richmond.





















Community Revitalizer - Individual or entity that strives to positively transform areas within Greater Richmond.























Henry David Thoreau Environmental Conservator - Individual or entity that promotes preservation of the earth through exemplary environmental responsibility and innovative green practices.

Project M now accepting applications

The Project M summer 2009 program is now accepting applications. Since 2003 the Project has taken design students on a month long journey to discover ways to use their skills for social good. In 2007 they produced the project Buy-A-Meter project to help area residents buy electric meters. This year the project, which only accepts 8 students, will be in Greensboro, Alabama. For more details download the application PDF HERE.