Happy Earth Day!

Clip from Democracy NOW! from Bill McKibben's appearance at the Power Shift 2011 Conference last week in Washington, D.C. Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org; 350 is the parts per million upper limit of CO2 we need to maintain for a sustainable planet.

Here is a link to the Democracy NOW! clip.

More Posters

Grist sends me an email every time someone comments on a post I commented on.  I think that's okay, but has the potential to be annoying; however, a person on the post commented about some design students at the University of Minnesota creating a bunch of posters in conjunction with Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) in 2007.  The one to the left is one of them, and they all have the same WPA awesomeness as the ReadyMade set from 2008.

Okay, this is supposed to be Paul Bunyan carrying a turbine instead of an axe, walking next to Babe, right?  Yes, I get it!

Here's another one that I liked, but they're all really neat and you should take a look!





Thanks to Mr. Thiede for sharing the link to the Flickr feed :)

Grist: 10 Radical Environmental Posters

I'm not sure how "radical" the ideas are but they sure are pretty.  I blogged a while back about a similar effort posted at ReadyMade by designers to think about posters as WPA-type propaganda efforts (since at the time of printing we were in the midst of a chronic economic meltdown).  This series, hosted by Grist.com has more to do with the environment than the economy, but the heart of thinking about alternatives to our current path is core to these efforts.  Pictured are my two favorites: "Let's Ride" by Jason Hardy (#7), and "Detroit as Refrain" by Paul Elliman.

The short author comments on their designs are interesting, but I'm going to call BS on Hardy's claim that he chose the green background because green is eco and green means "go" - he chose the damn color because it's the color of a celeste Bianchi.  ADMIT IT, JASON!

I'm also really fond of the last one, "Detroit as Refrain" by Paul Elliman because it takes its cues from an earlier appropriation aesthetic than the other posters, and uses a film commissioned and then suppressed by Chrysler for its theme; this allows the image to be free once again and to expose the hypocrisy of Detroit capitalist and racial politics that has plagued that city for too, too long.  Elliman also notes that it "represents the start of a new age in which the Detroit National Park becomes the first city under the aegis of the National Park Service (U.S. Department of the Interior), circa 2025."  That's pretty dang cool.

Well, enjoy.  Now back to work.

Update on Jeans and Thesis

My thesis director rues the day she agreed to chair my committee.  Why?  Because I'm slacking on finishing up my thesis and choosing to blog instead.

Anyway, so the All American Jeans.  I posted recently that I made the decision between a pair of jeans from All American Clothing Co. and Pointer Brand (NOTE: do not have your speakers turned up if you click on the pointer link, they have the most annoying dog bark that greets you on the home page), both made in the US.  I thought I would do a side-by-side of MOST AMERICAN MADE characteristics each pair possesses, but really it came down to fit.  The Pointer pair, while I liked the look of the straight-leg it ran a little too small in the waist and too long in the leg for the size I usually wear and I was afraid that if I washed them they would be impossible to zip up.  While I am not fond of a boot-cut leg, the All American Jeans had a good cut and fit well in the waist - they were just a tiny bit long in the leg but I can live with that.

I reported around the holidays about my first buy from All American, when I bought a pair of work pants for the Old Man.  It is his favorite pair, and he loves the Wigwam work socks (they are pretty dang cushy), so I'm going to get him another pair of work pants in the khaki color (I still can't get over the snazzy, almost irrelevant, welt pocket in the leg for a cell phone).  He works as a public relations sprite for an ag college so the pants are just dressy enough for his day to day.  They are comparable to Land's End and if they're American Made I'm supporting US manufacturing.

So, I've got my new pair of jeans for the wardrobe (now it's getting too hot to wear them so they'll sit in the closet until next fall), and the old jeans will be put to use this summer in the construction of Smart Gloves. 

Got the super-duper patriotic picture from Dem Chiclet Boyz (thanks, brah).