May 2007

Sustainability is becoming a very popular concept and I have heard the term used with increasing frequency in both a corporate and domestic context. It’s a great thing, seeing the green movement finally becoming mainstream after 35 odd years of fringe-dwelling and the majority of people are making day to day decisions based on the knowledge that our resources are limited and must be managed wisely. That said, sustainability not simply about acting within the Earth’s carrying capacity. It has components of equity and social justice as well – poverty and war are the two phenomena that do the most harm to us and our planet.

The first question that should be asked when talking about sustainability is "What are we trying to sustain?"

The answer is, "Us".

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Priscilla (hosting this weeks Carnival of nonprofit consultants) points to this quick post outlining the results of a study looking at the factors for success of a fundraising campaign.

Good tips based on my experience…

Penny sent this around via email, and I thought it worth posting here – Chris Jordan: Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait.

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books.

Amazing and impacting work…

We redesigned and launched Climate Friendly’s new site a few weeks ago but this article (originally at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18864419/) reminded me how important it is for all of us to do our bit and drastically reduce our carbon footprint NOW. Reducing our demand is the most important and first step (hang on some lights to turn off in the studio!) then we should offset what we can’t reduce through companys like Climate Friendly.

It’s so frustrating that the US Govt (and the Aussie one!) are getting in the way of the transformation process that is taking place. It’s already a nail biting race to turn things around and these clowns won’t get out of the way. Anyway positive change is happening, and if the Democrats get in maybe we’ll see the change we so desperately need.

I wish i could say the same for Labor here, alas with this sort of thing happening in Tasmania under a Labor Government and the states doing far less than they should the signs are not good.

This is a great summary courtesy of eskimo friend Ben Cooper and via BigShinyThing…

I knew it was well and truly time to get our blog live when i read about our latest d.eskimo recruit Grant Young in the smh waxing lyrical about Web 2.0. We’ve known for a long time we needed to blog about our unique agency and our experiences climbing ‘Mount Sustainability’ as Ray Anderson calls it. Alas with limited resources and a rather lovely problem of having a fully booked studio for the past few years we have been a little behind the curve in the blogosphere.

The team is excited about pouring our latest (and a few years backlog!) thoughts , discoveries and ideas on strategy, design, innovation, sustainability and many other topics into the blog. We hope it will become a valuable resource for other agencies and small businesses to access in time.

We also hope to provide some insight into our unique approach, we call it ‘Considered Design’. It’s an exciting and evolving idea, and it will evolve right here with your help as all our designs do.

Dave Gravina
Founder & Creative Director