This was covered by Engadget already, but it is amazing enough that we’re jumping on the bandwagon.
Victor Kaonga points us to Dr. Cedrick Ngalande, a Malawian, who has built a prototype power source made specifically for Africa. It generates power using sugar and yeast for up to 8 hours at a time.
Popularity: 11% [?]
A few months ago we did a small project for ClimateCounts, an organization which tracks climate “performance” of a variety of well-known companies. Wood Turner, who directs ClimateCounts, gave us a lot of freedom to do a design which expresses some of the rich data they track.
The design, above, displays company size (by market capitalization) as relative “tread” size; that is, General Electric and Google are large companies. Color (green,yellow,red) corresponds to climate performance, as does the size of the typeface. Therefore Starbucks, which is a relatively small company, is shown in large text size and with a green colored tread. We did 2 shirts each in 2 color schemes.
The intention is not for users to derive hard numbers from this, but the meaning behind the shirt makes for a good talking point and is a quick way to look up climate performance without looking like a dense table of data. We also wanted to make a shirt which people would want to wear. We’re getting a pile of these on top of our fee so we can strut around wearing our own design.
Popularity: 13% [?]
One of our most recent clients, GreenVolts has just launched their new site, which we spent the last month or so designing. In their own words:
GreenVolts, Inc., based in San Francisco, was founded in 2005 to deliver solar power at fossil fuel costs. Through low cost and high efficiency, GreenVolts can access large markets previously inaccessible to solar power. GreenVolts changes the economics of solar energy.
Please check it out! We welcome any feedback.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Click image above to play video
Freestyle Walking: No longer just a euphemism for your friend falling on their face! Check out this great new video for RJD2’s “Work it Out.” (click image above) While just plain cool, reading the blurb from the YouTube page is simply inspiring:
Bill Shannon who was born with a degenerative hip condition. His legs cannot carry his own weight and so he has lived a life on crutches. He has developed a new way of moving through life on his skateboard and the crutches.
At our current rate of consumption, the human population can similarly not “carry its own weight” and is leaving a massive ecological footprint. In the same way this young man has “developed new ways of moving through life,” I think we should jump on the problems at hand as opportunities to develop something just as creative and unique. Just look at the neat design of those crutches! They look a lot more like fun than a necessity. Solving climate change and a host of other green problems should leave us with the same fly-high kind of feeling. So let’s do this thing in style.
Link to Bill Shannon’s website
Link to video
See Also: Hip Hop 1930s Remix, Roykopp’s Diagram Music Vid, World Changing Book
Popularity: 9% [?]
Here’s some food for thought as we go into the 3rd week of my look into packaging: What if packaging design was just a little more considered?
Could our sidewalks and road-sides be free of bottle caps and cigarette packs? Maybe our gutters wouldn’t be clogged with plastic bags and blister packs. Perhaps our oceans might have one less gigantic garbage patch.
I’m a fan of Clif Bar’s recent effort to keep litter in its place. The Litter Leash is a pretty clever little piece of design (it’s covered by two utility patents).
Its elegant design inspires me. It’s so simple, effective and “obvious,” yet unmatched. Now, it’s by no means perfect, but in essence, the litter leash takes a step to build a mental connection between litter and the environment and makes the user take responsibility for this tiny piece of trash.
Futureproofed might be a good word for it… What inspires you?
Patent 6,702,462
Patent 6,244,467
Popularity: 8% [?]
Yup, that’s right. The fun, ‘how-to’ Instructables group is teaming up with magazine Popular Science and environmental blog Treehugger to host a contest encouraging folks to post instructions on how to do things greener. We here at Vestal are super excited to see what inventive stuff folks come up with. Most posts on Instructables already use affordable and recycled materials and show impressive resourcefulness, so it’ll be fun to see what people do when given this specific task. We’ll be sure to update y’all on the stuff we thought was neat. But hurry, you only have until Aug 19th to post!
Link to Contest
See Also: Solar Oven from Reflector, Plastic Bag Wallet, Make Your Own (Real) Diamonds
Popularity: 9% [?]
During a trip to China, I was shocked to find a Coke can with a ring pull tab (also known as a rimple). For those of you who are not familiar with the ring pull, it’s probably because they haven’t been very widely used for decades now. (They were phased out of use in the 80’s due to sharp edges and the tendency for the tabs to be casually tossed aside and become litter.)
In 1975, Dan Cudzik patented the ubiquitous “stay-tab” which offered a safer and more environmentally responsible solution which we now find on virtually every aluminum beverage can. The design is delightfully simple and keeps the tab attached to the can unless the user intentionally breaks the tab free.
So, when I found this can, I thought it was rather odd that the multi-national Coca-Cola corporation would use this arguably less responsible packaging solution in China. My guess is that this type of packaging is fractions of a cent cheaper to manufacture, providing financial savings to Coca-cola. However, given the undesirable traits of the ring pull, this would imply that the executives at Coca-cola make the conscious and deliberate decision to use an obsolete, dangerous and environmentally irresponsible packaging solution to increase profits at the expense of the public good. I find this juxtaposition of 44 year-old pull tab technology with modern boy-band, pop-icon graphics quite unfortunate.
Link to 1963 Ring-pull Patent
Link to 1975 Stay-tab Patent
Popularity: 11% [?]
Here’s a nice compilation of carbon (per-capita and total) emissions by state. It’s interesting to see some of the outliers – for example, South Dakota vs. North Dakota. One question in my mind is – do states with large cities have better per-capita scores because of public transportation and shared carbon costs (for example, heating in an apartment building), or would those be offset anyways by more industry? What is the greatest factor towards lowering carbon emissions, policy or land-use?
Scroll down to see the map. Link: http://www.eredux.com/states/
Popularity: 6% [?]
POM Wonderful, the pomegranate drink company, has come out with a new delicious line of products: POM Tea. In addition to being really yummy, it comes in a beautiful, slender glass, a deviation from their original eye-catching but awkwardly bulbous pomegranate glass design (on left).
An elegant alternative to drinking from clunkier mason jars (think “glass tomato sauce containers”), the Pom Reuse’s is more simliar to traditional glass design and will stick out less next to the other glasses in the cupboard. While the price is a bit steep, often as high as $3.50 a glass, I like to think I’m buying a set of nice glasses that just happens to come with a “prize” inside.
See Also: Reusable Toothbrush Case
Popularity: 6% [?]
I’ve been using an Epson 2200 printer for quite a number of years now (it’s more than 5 years old! That’s almost unheard of now in the world of ultra-cheap printers). It’s a great 6 color printer, but with that many colors comes a whole lot of cartridges to keep handy. I hate running out of ink, so every now and again, when I’m checking out online or at the store, I’ve been known to grab an extra box of ink or two, just in case.
I’ve always thought that ink cartridge packaging was excessive. Well, just recently I looked in the closet to discover that over the years, the Epson 2200 cartridge packing has gone on a diet!
The packaging began at whopping 77g, (11cm x 15cm x 3.5cm), and as a consumer, it was painfully apparent that this box was much larger than the cartridge itself. About two years ago, Epson slimmed down this packaging by eliminating corrugated cardboard filler and shrink wrap inside the box and narrowed the width to 2cm to drop the packaging to 63g.
The cartridge itself is only about 7cm tall, so a third generation of packaging shrank the box down another 3.5cm to 57g. Interestingly, an empty cartridge weighs approx 29g, so $10.99 buys you about 28g of ink. (That’s the equivalent of buying ink at a rate of $178/lb! )
There’s no doubt in my mind that by shrinking the packaging, Epson has not only helped the environment, but made a lot more money in the process. Given how light the product is, it’s no where near maxing out the capacity of the boxes and shipping containers. So, by being smaller and lighter, Epson is able to pack more cartridges onto a pallet, maximizing shipping efficiency and making an easy buck.
This only goes to show that the world is full of opportunities to clean up our act and pick some low hanging fruit!
(ps. you’ll notice that the graphic design changed on the packaging… more on that later!)
Popularity: 6% [?]
