Power to the Poster

I came across this great site that uses designers' powers for good, not evil. Based in America, anyone can submit a poster design to the site, and anyone can download and print them. Some of them are compelling, beautiful, shocking. This is designers doing what designers should do, and has been done throughout the centuries, from the printing of Martin Luther's reformist ideas, to news of the Russian Revolution being projected through Constructivism and Agit Prop.

Which brings me back to the point that my home town has such draconian graffiti laws that it would be madness to print something like this out and paste it up. This means that in Brisbane, advertising wins. Advertising lies and consumerist propaganda are our only visual cues, and we see around 4000 of them per day.

We need to lobby council for a laneway street art area like Melbourne has, or imagine our own version, so we can stick these things up, and make our own. I want to read the people's words and visual creations, not corporations' manipulative slogans.

Grow your own solar cells?

photo: Vasant Dave (www.sxc.hu)
Amazingly clever researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a way to cajole tobacco plants into growing photovoltaic cells which can then be harvested and sprayed onto specially-receptive surfaces. Basically, grow-your-own solar cells!

The thrilling research uses a virus to reprogram the tobacco's cells into creating the tiny structures. Cheaper, biodegradable, and a much better use for the evil weed. Bravo!
read more here

The sustainable design widget's rise to fame

As of 31 December, 2009, four thousand, one hundred and thirty five sustainable graphic design widgets have been downloaded from the Apple website and various other portals' download sections. For example, Icograda provides a link to it to their resources page, AGDA (whose scholarship sponsored it) provide it on their site, and many other design blogs and Australian design universities (such as RMIT) list it in their curriculum as a valuable tool.

It has been exhibited in "Busan Brisbane Design Exchange 2008" in Australia and South Korea, featured in "Queensland Designer issue 5/2008" (pictured), and recently exhibited in "Sustain Me", a contemporary design exhibition at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Sydney.

It gives me such a thrill to think that the knowledge summarised within is accessible to that many designers and allied industries all over the world. Download it here if you want to see what all the fuss is about.