product
A design manifesto from Finland: “We believe that the world already has enough chairs. Designing new ones only takes time away from renovating the ones we already have. Consider this the ultimate challenge for you to rethink how sustainable design should be manifested.”My favorite part: “Best designers think ‘how not to.’”
Added to my growing list of design manifestos.
8 December 2011 | The Occupy Wall Street Journal
Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum and supporters. But what are they calling for? Read all about it in the forthcoming edition of The Occupy Wall Street Journal:
“We want to be the people’s media. Our first project is The Occupy Wall Street Journal, a four-page broadsheet newspaper with an ambitious print run of 50,000. It’s aimed at the general public. The idea is to explain what the protest is about and profile different people who have joined and why they joined. We will explain the issues involved and how the general assembly process operates at Liberty Plaza. It will also offer resources and ways to join. The emphasis will be on quality content, design, photography and artwork that uses incisive humor to make it a lively read.
Future projects include longer editions of the newspaper, bold stickers, edgy posters, colorful palm cards and inspiring flyers.
This project is a volunteer effort: every penny you donate will go directly to printing and distribution.”
Help fund printing and distribution (and get a copy for yourself) on Kickstarter until October 9, 2011.
Update 10/6/11: You can see the first edition here.
Phone Story is a video game for iPhone critical of human rights violations on Apple’s iPhone supply chain. Each level in the game explores a different real-life problem in the consumer electronics life cycle. To win, players must enslave children in Congolese Coltan mines, catch suicidal workers jumping out of Chinese assembly plant windows, and conscript the poorest of the world's poor to dismantle toxic e-waste resulting from obsolete iPhones.The t-shirts originally read ‘hardcore rebels’ and sported a skull and nationalist flags. However, once the garment had been washed, the shirt revealed a new message that offered to help far-right extremists break away from the neo-Nazi scene. The message reads: ‘If your t-shirt can do it, you can do it too — we’ll help you get away from right-wing extremism.’”
Duping your target audience seems like a good way to alienate them. But it’s certainly a memorable action, is generating a bit of buzz, and I suspect will reach many more in the re-telling.
Bernd Wagner, the founder of Exit-Germany, the anti-racism organization behind the shirts, comments at The Guardian.
“The Combat Paper Project utilizes art making workshops to assist veterans in reconciling and sharing their personal experiences as well as broadening the traditional narrative surrounding service and the military culture. Through papermaking workshops veterans use their uniforms worn in combat to create cathartic works of art. The uniforms are cut up, beaten into a pulp and formed into sheets of paper. Veterans use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences in the military.”
”The US has sent Bahrain dozens of ‘excess’ American tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopter gunships. The US has also given the Bahrain Defense Force thousands of .38 caliber pistols and millions of rounds of ammunition, from large-caliber cannon shells to bullets for handguns. To take one example, the US supplied Bahrain with enough .50 caliber rounds—used in sniper rifles and machine guns—to kill every Bahraini in the kingdom four times over.“ Previously: tear gas in Egypt.Egypt's Tears
Via Facebook: photo of a tear gas canister from a police crackdown on protesters in Egypt.
The label: “Made in U.S.A.”
One for One
- Noted previously, with every pair of shoes you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. As of September 2010, TOMS has given over one million pairs of shoes.
- In 2007 and 2008, under its Give 1 Get 1 program the One Laptop per Child program donated a laptop to a child in the developing world for every computer sold. 83,500 laptops were donated in 2007 and 12,500 in 2008.
- FIGS, a necktie retailer in Santa Monica donates one school uniform to a child in Africa for every tie it sells.
- For each pair of eyeglasses sold, Warby Parker donates a pair of eyeglasses to someone in need through Restoring Vision. To date, that’s almost 10,000 pairs.
- Out of Print in Brooklyn, donates one book to Books for Africa every time it sells one of its T-shirts, which feature the covers of mostly out-out-of print books.
- For every condom it sells, Sir Richard’s plans to give another condom away for free in a developing nation through Partners in Health.
- For every nutrition bar you buy from Two Degrees, they give a nutrition pack to a hungry child..
- Every time you buy a book, Better World Books will donate one to someone in need.
