In my last post I spoke about how design can save your business in tough financial times. However, there is a saying that I often repeat to remind myself that there is more than one way to solve a problem.
“When all you have is a hammer, you will see a world of nails.”
The importance of good design in uncertain financial times.
When we are little, and even when we are bigger, we are often told not to judge a book by its cover. As a designer, I think that is a bunch of baloney. While we would like to appease our ego with the thought of being above our subconscious prejudices, we are all wired to make snap judgements. In the book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell, the author introduces the concept of the “adaptive unconscious.” The adaptive unconscious is a sort of supercomputer that “quickly and quietly processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings.” It is the mechanism behind the snap judgements we continuously make while going about our daily business. Without such a mechanism, we as conscious thinkers would be so tied down in pondering the effects of every little decision that we would be unable to accomplish the tasks necessary to our survival.
“Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest” - Capt. Charles Moore, Algalita Marine Research Foundation
For those of you following this blog, you will know that I have spent the last few posts talking about plastics and the consequences of using them. In our modern lives, we use and discard an extraordinary amount of plastics. For example, in the United States we use and discard over 4 Million plastic cups everyday. Doesn’t seem like much, until you find out that the 4 Million cups were used and discarded on airplanes. Think about that, 4 Million plastic cups per day so we can have a little drink on the airplane.
When you are first considering going green, there is a lot to start thinking about, but its important to not get overwhelmed. Just remember the end goal is to make your company green, so start small, and work your way up from there. I remember a few lessons i learned back in grade school about how to change our impact on the environment, and you will find that even these childhood lessons are helpful when trying to make a change. I will list off my childhood lessons, and how they can be changed and modified for todays business world! (more…)
There is a funny quirk of the English language that has an odd way of influencing the way we think. Words have a very powerful affect, they more or less determine our ability to think. Let’s just pretend that we only know a total of 10 words, in this case all nouns and totally unrelated. Our brains only have the ability to understand and communicate 10 different concepts. Replace one of those nouns with an adjective, and we suddenly have almost doubled our vocabulary as we can now communicate at least 19 different concepts. This simplistic example showcases just how dependent upon words we actually are. The more words we know the more thoughts we are capable of having, and the more complex our thoughts can be.
Every so often we like to flex our creative muscles and make some fun stuff. RobotMan is a fun little wallpaper available for download. We just wanted to create something fun to cover desktops the world over. Hope you enjoy it.
Polyvinyl Chloride better known as PVC is a prominent plastic resin with a variety of uses, but it has serious environmental issues that need to be considered. In a previous post I spoke about the various types of plastic resins and some of their associated issues. However, the implications of PVC merit a deeper examination.
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GreenBiz.com has released their 2009 report on the State of Green Business. This year they are reporting a mixed bag of results, from their study of about 1500 green articles and blogs. The overall trend seems to mimic the general state of the economy as a whole. Some segments are showing positive gains while others are feeling the squeeze. According the the report, there was added interest in the rise of a “Green” economy and it’s ability to provide new jobs. With the sudden collapse of the world’s economy, a Green future became a source of hope for companies seeking new revenue streams and hoping to create jobs. Sadly, the costly downturn in economic activity is making the “switch” all the more difficult and risky.
For designers, making environmentally sustainable decisions often comes down to the choice of material used for a client’s project. When it comes to packaging design, there are literally thousands of possibilities for source materials. Plastics are one of the most common and prevalent choices available. They are lightweight, relatively cheap (in terms of upfront cost) and readily available.
Unfortunately, from a sustainability stand point they lack pizzazz. The majority of plastics are made from petroleum products and are therefore not renewable. Additionally, plastics are extremely, perhaps overly, durable. When a typical plastic container is placed into a modern landfill, it is expected to last at least 1000 years. Worst still is that the molecules that comprise most plastics are complex and don’t really break down. So in 1000 years time, the plastic may appear to be gone, but in reality it has probably just dispersed into the eco-system in really small pieces.
Every so often Neon Sumo likes to flex our collective creative muscles and do a creative design exercise. This time around we elected to examine the process of creating a new snowboarding brand. As snowboarding and skiing are a big part of life here in Colorado, we decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to explore the community in a little more depth. Since snowboarding is so dependent upon climate we also found it to be a perfect example of a business that would benefit from going green. This series is going to be released in 4 separate parts.
Help Neon Sumo plant 1000+ trees, by playing our newest online game The Legend of Peapod! For every 50 million points submitted to our score board we will plant one tree. Click here to play the game and help plant some trees!
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