Category: <span>Sustainable</span>

Published September 1, 2009 by

Information Design for Advocacy

visualizing-information-design1While sitting in class I was imagining the possibilities of information design in regards to voicing stuff I care about when they suddenly sprung us with this link.

Information Visualization for Advocacy – John Emerson (Title will download the pdf approx 7mb)

I do value Swinburne for hammering on about stuff that matters, even if this particular example was more a general resource to kick us in to action with our assignments. I intend someday to have a crack at a piece, so if someone wants to throw some data or an idea at me, it would be welcome.

This was not just written for designers the lovely Ellen Lupton (I’m sure she’s lovely – not that I’ve met her, but she’s a twin like me so of course she’s lovely) goes on about making design accessible to all. You go right ahead.

Sometimes I wish I’d discovered information design sooner. On a side note, my assignment piece is on John Friedrich and I will potentially be mapping relationships between him and Iago from Othello (Shakespeare). Should be interesting.

Create Culture Design Social Justice Sustainable Uni

Published August 26, 2009 by

Weight and embodied water

coffeeA little while back I talked about Wii Fit Routines, since then I have used the wii fit relatively frequently – not quite as often as I’d have hoped but we’re getting there and definitely more effectively. Although no massive weight change, my efforts have paid off in how well I can do particular things such as the 10+ minute jog getting my 57% burn rate to a 112% (I don’t think over 100% is mathematically correct, but that’s for the machine and I to argue about, nor do I know how they calculate these numbers – I think probably on how consistently and steadily you run). The whole routine thing, now that I’m back at uni, is starting to settle in.

As you may have read over on Geoff’s blog there is now a ‘competition’ running with my in-laws to pull the body weight down before Christmas. Mostly as a bit of motivation. I don’t need to lose more than about 5kg so I probably can’t win, but the motivation of a competiton is a good one regardless of the prize (Which is good, but not the real draw card). Unfortunately I’m beginning to suspect that there is one little aspect of my diet that if I altered, could have a relatively decent impact without me doing a whole lot.

Cut the coffee.

I also discovered this past week that coffee has horrendously high embodied water which makes me quite sad (140L per cup!). Embodied water is all the water that goes into making something/a product. If you really want to save water, you can keep having those 3-4minute showers but you really need to work address embodied water as that’s where the biggest change can be made. Yes, your consumption of products affects water. And water is fast running out. We’re in the shits hitting the fan stage. It’s a much bigger problem than advertised.

So will I cut the coffee? Perhaps not all of it, but I will limit the intake somewhat and opt for tea. Although I hate paying for tea when I’m out, I always get the idea that I’m just paying for a little bit of flavoured water… but I guess that’s better than 140L buckets arriving at my table.

Check out more about embodied water on Water Footprint

the awesome coffee infographic is from here

Coffee Life Sustainable

Coffee embodied water running out of water sustainability weight loss wii fit

Published June 23, 2009 by

Pot of Herbs

herbs

Lets see if I can grow something… I used to like gardening when I was younger. So can’t be bothered putting in any effort while in a rental though.

Chives, Parsley, Basil, Mint.

Just the basics.

Experiments Holidays Life Sustainable

Published May 28, 2009 by

Food is fertiliser (and a logo)

I have just completed my Design & Business class (That’s one down, yay!) it was not what I had expected, not quite what I was hoping for and a certainly scored a group with some peculiar dynamics…

Our business plan wound around this idea of converting food scraps from restaurants into organic fertiliser: yes it can be done, our focus was on the service of waste removal and forging links between the food and farming industries. This is the logo I designed for Waste Organics… it was done quickly (it’s not quite even) and the idea to me still seems a little too cutesy or something that resonates with the word flabby – but it probably works for what it is. The kind of nice irony is that apparently ‘dandelions are a logo design trend for 2009‘ – I did not know this before today. There is also a secondary version with the forks growing – for the future projection with farming involvement.

I am truly glad to see the tail end of this class, it tried my patience no end and I did have to do a lot of the work, but all up it was a kind of pleasing outcome. Cheers and good riddance.

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Branding Design Sustainable Uni

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Published May 5, 2009 by

AGIdeas 2009

As of today (and the next 2) I am at AGIdeas a mega design conference held in Melbourne annually.

I’ll keep it brief as I’m slightly exhausted as they really do pack in one keynote after the next and my brain is kinda fried. We started at 9:30 (very respectable) and ran over the 5:30 finish, I left the building around 6:30 a bit before the last guy finished.

Highlights are many, but I particularly enjoyed:

Stefan Sagmeister (and hey the guy is famous at my uni and okay, pretty much everywhere in the world of design) – he spoke on Design and Happiness which is interesting in relation to some of my own ideas, much of it was about how design factored into his experiences of happiness but not in a freaky commercial way.

Shannon Bennett a young innovative restaurateur based in Melbourne (see Vue De Monde), completely delightfully creative in his field

Alexia Sinclaire mostly for her work, digital art, it was pretty inspiring

Detective Sergent Adrian Patterson (Retired) who was the criminal identification bureau and has helped revolutionise the use of computer graphics in a very practical cop-sense. Great presenter, and bought a good perspective personally about thinking about design outside the usual sphere of ‘where you do design’

Etiene Mineur can’t help but love the French, but facinating stuff with graphic design and the web and some pretty amazing interactive stuff

John Marsden scares me that the writer was probably my favourite presenter, he talked about finding your voice and the value of status (also not in a freaky commerical way) but in the sense of adapting language to fit situations and characters. Loved it.

Also worth a note here is Chris Bosse who designed the Bejing Olympics swimming arena (that square thing that looks like it’s made of bubbles), Bart Willoughby who is an Aboriginal Aussie musician and Michael Pearson who talked about Swedish design.

I am very impressed… except for one who was pretty much a write off in any sense of the word useful (He was also remarkably boring).

And…

We get a sweet book to keep about all the presenters and various design stuff etc. Free lunch on two days (and yes it was good!) And hey 😛 I could win an Iphone.

Design Life Sustainable Technology Uni

AGIdeas design conference sagmeister