The box that is no box at all. fuseproject, working with Puma, have redesigned at one element of shopping in the shoe world. Check out fuseproject’s other designs, it’s all pretty beautiful, and always under the helm of Yves Behar:

Béhar brings a humanistic approach to his work with the goal of creating projects that are deeply in-tune with the needs of a sustainable future, connected with human emotions and which enable self-expression.

Behar/fuseprojects is notable for his work in the design of the laptop in question for the ‘One Laptop Per Child’ project, among other projects which he discusses here:

As with any occasion on which a designer discusses their work which is aimed at being environmentally and socially sustainable, especially when discussing projects aimed at ‘developing nations’ he makes many points both intentional and inadvertent which point out the good and the bad aspects of Rich White Designers doing work “for” the Poor Brown Folk of the world.

But as i said: it’s all pretty beautiful, and coming from an honorable impetus. Perhaps i’m over critical because he’s doing something very similar to what i would like to be doing.

incidentally, is there anybody out there? comment on this post if you’re reading. i see the stats, and it seems people are still looking at this thing, but i wonder who you are (probably just my mommy).

I just came across this site the other week on Motionographer, Nissan’s Journey To Zero. I’m usually not a huge fan of the whole ‘emersive web experience’ type of thing, or most uses of flash, or even websites with music for that matter. But I have to say, the content intention and design of this Journey to Zero site are great.

It includes talks from Richard Saul Wurman who is the Founder and Chairman of TED, and who in 1976 coined the phrase ‘Information Architect’ (this guy is fast becoming another one of our favorite people), and involves contributions from Universal Everything, Markus Eriksson/Subdisc, SU11, IAAH, Wade Davis, and PSFK. Works include videos, motion graphics, a typeface, essays and a call to action for people to download and create video response to the content created by IAAH…

Overall I think it’s really nice to see so many smart and talented people coming together to brand and discuss how we can move toward zero emissions. I know a lot of this sort of corporate giant funded projects can sometimes seem hallow, but it’s still important to have the discussion. Even if you want credit for funding it. Better spend your money on that than on simply fighting legislation or more silly cars.

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And Nissan has spent money to roll out the first production electric car just this year. Another good step. I was fortunate enough to be asked to help animate some of these informational videos for the Nissan Leaf, Nissans new fully electric car. It’s pretty smart for them to go straight ahead into developing an electric car, if an obvious one. It still takes some corporate courage to make the big changes happen. But surely, we all can see that cars that don’t run on gas are the future, so it’s smart to get a production gas free car on the market and the sooner the better. Gives you a leg up on the competition. I still think it’s very unfortunate that no one  had the guts to work harder and push this technology sooner.

Nissan, with these changes has definitely moved from somewhere in the background into the forefront of how to solve some of the issues we have with emissions and transportation. And hopefully this will move other auto-manufacturers to have to do them one better or keep up with some actual acts of environmental responsibility…

Ken Yeang and Ross Lovegrove show how nature can inspire our living spaces and cities by fusing efficiency and beauty.

via SwissMiss.

Informative piece on Fair Trade Labeling from Katarzyna Kijek in Warsaw.

The Canary Project is an organization working to increase the public’s awareness of our global ecological predicament. They do this by “[producing] visual media, events, and artwork that builds public understanding of human-induced climate change and energize commitment to solutions.”

The list of related projects on their website is very impressive, and inspiring.

Beautiful work, to be sure. please do check it out.

The book, found here. Is now officially on my wish-list.

Oh how i wish i had architecture training, to be involved in projects like these:

Janine Benyus talks about her ways of loving all children of all species for all time:

Design, according to Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary can be defined:

1. To draw preliminary outline or main features of; to sketch for a pattern or model; to delineate; to trace out; to draw.

2. To mark out and exhibit; to designate; to indicate; to show; to point out; to appoint.

3. To create or produce, as a work of art; to form a plan or scheme of; to form in idea; to invent; to project; to lay out in the mind; as, a [person] designs an essay, a poem, a statue, or a cathedral.

In both the most broad and the most specific terms, I think it is fair to say that the problems we face today as a planet are problems of design.¹ I would argue 1) that short sighted design of the past has created our present catastrophe, and 2) that only in radically readdressing the design of our design—the reasons and goals for designing anything in the first place—can we survive as a species.²

The danger in not looking past the apparent logic or ubiquity of poor design choices has given us world hunger, mass genocide, extinctions, and a chain of climate events that could potentially turn off all the life enabling function of our planet. As one of many hundreds of initiatives to counteract these and other problems, Valerie Casey (designer, CCA professor) gives us:

a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.

Designers (like myself) have a way of feeling guilty about manipulating the public³ into buying goods⁴ or services⁵ for the benefit of a corporation,⁶ and profiting on the work in the process. (funny, that.)

The Designers Accord works to help the ills of our planet, and ease the guilt of it’s designers: a win-win proposition, in both the most broad and the most specific terms.

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¹ To be more accurate, we could push further to say that our problems of design are really problems of outlook / mind-set, and that those problems are really ones of philosophy and ethics, and further say that those are often problems of perception and relational psychology, or still further suppose that they are all problematic side effects of our planetary evolution. The argument of such esoteric notions becomes ever murkier the deeper you reach, but i would say that going at least to the level of philosophy and ethics, we’re still talking about design, if only in a different way than we tend to think of that word. Solving any problem, or organizing any set of thoughts could be said to be designing.

² The merits of saving our species are greatly debatable, but I’d say we should at least give it a shot.

³ Manipulation largely means of cutting down trees, applying energy to process those trees into paper, as well as to process various compounds into ink, and printing advertisements that are often not recycled (itself a non-resource efficient process), advertisements that are generally unsafe to put in the ground or the water^3a (even though we do).

^3a Unsafe because they end up In either land fills or water fills, as a result either of littering or sloppy distribution, and are produced with unruly or toxic chemicals in the paper and ink both.

⁴ Products which themselves end up in the ground or the water.

⁵ Services which are often superfluous, or at least questionable.

⁶ Corporations which generally (as taken in the long view) are unhealthy for the economy, for their communities, for their employees, or for the environment.