Dave Kellam

The folks at smashLAB and ideasonideas have started a new initiative called Design Can Change. The flash presentation focuses on the impact that designers have on the environment and their role in sustainable development. It’s primarily targeted at print designers because they have the largest ecological footprint… think pollution from the pulp and paper industry.

As a book design student, I’ve done a lot of printing over the last six months and am probably responsible for the destruction of a small forest. It’s hard to avoid, things just don’t look right on-screen. I’m almost ashamed to admit that our typography department didn’t even recycle waste paper until about a month ago. Seeing bins full of paper trimmings every night was kind of depressing.

The presentation will take some time to go through, it’s not overly short. The interface is a little bit awkward, but I’m not overly fond of websites that are completly constructed in Flash. They also seem to be focused on the North American market, it would be nice to get a list of eco-friendly European paper suppliers.

You can read more about the development and impetus for the project at ideasonideas. It’s also worth giving 1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design (at Core77) a quick read.

Just starting to decompress after the end of the semester and a whirlwind typography department tour of Rome and Florence. I’ve started to go through my photos, but need to clear up some harddrive space to get at some of them. There are a few posted in my Italy 2007 set on Flickr, including a full-res version of the above panorama from the forum, but it’ll will still be a little while before the rest go up. I’m also frustrated with iPhoto, and will likely switch over to managing my photos manually in combination with Lightroom.

In the meantime, some of the other students have started to post photos. First and foremost, check out Chris Hill-Scott’s photos of Rome and Florence. He’s a great photographer and managed to take some amazing shots, despite having course-work to do as an undergrad. Flickr is serving as the defacto post-grad repository, so far we have photos from Alice, Dan, Hans, Jasso and Jenni.

I’m off to the continent for a week, so there won’t be any posts for the next week or so (not that anyone would notice). I intended to a better job posting this month, but ended up bogged down with school-work. There were many a long night spent in the department during the last few weeks. The project was a lot of fun though — working with John Morgan, designing a hypothetical book series. We spent a day in London with Derek Birdsall, having an extended lunch with altogether too much wine. That project was topped off with a three-thousand word paper for an experiment that we had to design.

The trip to Italy is offered through the typography department. Technically, it’s an undergrad course, although it’s predominantly post-grad these days. Upon my return, there will be many nerdy typography related photos, and many of the more general variety. I will attempt to post some updates via my twitter account, provided my phone functions properly. See you on the other side.