John Grant published the Green Marketing Manifesto in 2007 and it influenced Pli’s marketing and business development strategy immediately. You can watch the author talking about ‘Love and Greed’ at the DO Lectures here. It’s fully weird…

The DO Lectures

Thanks to Howies for the link to the DO Lectures. There are lots of interesting talks here.

Lately, my mind has been occupied with space technology and life extension, as I reconsidered these notions in relation to the sustainability debate. A recent feature movie named ‘Wall-e’ introduces a dystopia, as a part of which the humankind has had to move to outerspace as the earth was packed with litter, to illustrate just one of the many possible scenarios awaiting us.

Peter Diamandis: Taking the next giant leap in space

While I was carrying out a little research about space technology to see what it might have to offer, I came across the video above, which is a talk by Peter Diamandis. His perception of space missions, extension of life, affluence of the mankind, and especially, “the things we hold value on this planet” were not a match with those of mine. Please watch the video and see for yourself.

Well that was about outer space, but how about our planet? I stumbled upon a piece of news that is surely of value: The tangible outcome of a recent scientific research was a “carbon-absorbing device”. It is surely a breakthrough invention by looking at its purpose, but could it cause an artificial relief for us to go on with our crucial mistakes?

Read more »

In some parts of the world, Sunday, the 21st of September, was “exhaustless”—namely ‘World Car Free Day’. For instance, Brusselleers enjoyed a day of bicycle-riding as an area of 160 km2 in the Belgian capital was closed to motor transport from 9AM to 7PM. In Hungary, people could ride on trains for free just by showing their automobile licenses.

As the current debate around sustainability gets hotter, we witness more and more initiatives being taken to raise awareness. Besides the ‘Car Free Day’ mentioned above, we have a ‘Buy Nothing’ day, an ‘Earth Hour’, and who knows what else? (You’re welcome to add what you know under Comments)

However, it is always a valid question whether all these ‘holy’ days of sustainability do any concrete good. Do they really help change our traits? Or are they just about doing the ‘in’ thing nowadays, when none of us wants to be left behind in the trendy game of being green? These were some issues touched upon also by a research project named “Energy Futures”, carried out by a trio of interns at Interactive Institute. The outcomes of this research were several scenarios with which the interns foresaw a future where sustainability and being green had totally translated itself into a religion. One could see the obvious link between those scenarios and today’s designated-days of being green.
Read more »

For the sake of adding a few different shades to those of green, I started reading a couple of books written by the cognitive scientist Donald A. Norman. As an interdisciplinarian he has been working both as a professor at Northwestern, and consultant to many design-oriented businesses (e.g. Apple) where he has brought a new approach that emphasizes usability and user-centered design.

The first book I’ve read by Norman was Emotional Design, where he provides us with three levels of design: Visceral (related to appearence, first impressions) behavioral (about usability and user experience) and reflective (about our memories, previous experiences, stories and narratives we could tell). Then he goes on further to advocate his theory that a good design has to “excel on all three levels”.

One could say that this is a reminder for us greens that using sustainable materials and processes does not always make our designs qualify as ‘good’. In other words, we shouldn’t take human psychology for granted while we give great importance to minimizing our impact on the environment. Norman’s theories provide an interesting perspective in that sense.
Read more »

In one of our lectures at Konstfack, we tuned, via Skype, to Mark Drewell from South Africa to hear some of his views on the current hot topics for our planet. The uniqueness of this online “mini-lecture” was not just in the form and the medium that was used, but also in the message. Mark paraphrased James Martin and his book The Meaning of the 21st Century, which actually has a whole school build around and named after it. Martin uses an analogy named “Into The Canyon” to describe the situation of our civilization as we face many signs telling us there’s something wrong with the way we’ve been dealing with the world.

“The Canyon” is a metaphor for the downfall of our species, considering the increasing number of social, ecological, political issues we have to deal with—inequity, population overload, intolerance, carbon overload, etc. The metaphor says that we’re heading down the canyon at full speed, and predicts the bottom-most point will be reached as we start experiencing vital problems–such as water scarcity–on a worldwide level.
Read more »

This was my first London Design Festival and I was unsure exactly what I was going to get. Was it going to be quirky, cutting-edge design or the bunch of faceless distributors that was the Birmingham Interiors show in January… well it was both really. The two boutique shows I went to, Tent and Designers Block, had some real creative flare, but we got round each exhibition in around 30 minutes. Whereas, at 100% Design in Earls Court, we really had to wade through a lot of fountain showers to find the gems of the exhibition.

Trends

Vintage
The Circa Vintage collection at Tent is a safe way to go when looking for design trends. We know most of it is good, otherwise it would have been thrown away years ago, but it is for a different reason that I think the vintage trend is a good one. The term “reuse” doesn’t get enough credit in environmental marketing; it is by far the most energy/waste friendly way of buying furniture, because the only reprocessing needed is a little elbow grease and a van ride or two. The key point here is to go authentic vintage — don’t cheat and go replica, because it is the patina that make these designs rich and desirable. You would only be selling yourself short otherwise. A popular piece in the circa vintage collection was the Eames DSW (below). I prefer the wooden leg version rather than the Eames DSR chrome legged version.

Eames DSW Chair , c1950

London Remade’s “Recycling Mixed Plastics” seminar was held at the Wellcome Collection building in Euston on Monday 29 September. I went along to listen and learn. It was good to see so many friendly faces in a very well attended event - there was standing room only at the back of the auditorium, emphasising how timely and interesting this subject is.

click the logo to download presentations

Read more »