“Digital Eskimo took Planet Ark’s National Recycling Week to another level. The re-brand of our logo is slick and sophisticated. The new kit folder design makes a strong environmental statement, yet it also has a unique sense of functionality. The team at Digital Eskimo were accommodating to our needs and great to work with.”
Daniella Santucci, Campaigns Manager, Planet Ark
(image courtesy of Ed Mitchell)
live local is our latest project which we’ve developed as a kind of joint social venture with Piers Dawson-Damer. The website is a place to share stories about improving our communities.
It makes it easy for local residents to document their experiences and adventures meeting neighbours, discovering neighbourhoods, supporting local economies, saving energy, water and much more.
Read the rest of this entry »
Make a comment »
Last night’s greenups was a great success with well over 100 people cramming into the Falconer for a four hour jam on all things green. It was great to see lots of familiar faces, a few old friends and to meet new green people from incredibly diverse backgrounds.
It was exactly the kind of mixed crowd we were hoping for and showed just how hungry Sydney’s green ‘movement’ is to connect with like-minded people who are passionate about sustainability and the green change we’re all a part of. (We gave just 5 days notice)
A highlight for me was meeting a couple (one of which is an electrical engineer and the other a Doctor) who came to connect with people in the hope that they could utilise their skills in green projects in the near future. That was exactly the kind of connection i was hoping to make. Ben and the crew at the uber-cool sustainable cafe, The Falconer, excelled themselves serving local and low carbon beers and tastey locally sourced food.
Work will begin soon on the next one as we take on the feedback and develop a more structured evening to help our green friends connect, create and inspire each other.
big (green)ups to all!
This is the launch event in an ongoing series of informal Green Meet-ups aimed at inspiring Sydney people who have an interest in sustainability. The idea is to connect, learn, share, inspire (and conspire!) with other like minded peeps.
Digital Eskimo joined with a very talented bunch of collaborators (Ben Ward, Dan Cass, Lianne Rossler, Phil Stubbs and Jessica Miller) to organise the series. Judging by the crew involved there are going be some very interesting people there.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
6:00pm – 10:00pm
The Falconer Cafe
31 Oxford St Darlinghurst
I’d love to meet some of the people who read our blog so rsvp on our facebook events page or send an email into rsvp@greenups.net.
Make a comment »
I just spent the weekend at the Sustainable Living Festival held at Federation Square in Melbourne, Victoria. It was truly inspiring to see just how much our southern state is doing on sustainability issues, particularly climate. They are clearly leading the country in terms of the mainstreaming of sustainability and there seem to be many more grass roots initiatives for climate related social change as well as larger scale projects than i have seen here in Sydney.
I wouldn’t call Victoria the Green State just yet with all of those dirty coal fired power stations (and sadly it may never be called the Garden state again with it’s climate change driven 12 year drought and subsequent bushfires) but its clearly got a strong community that is pushing the agenda forward.
Matt Wright at Beyond Zero Emissions gave a fantastic presentation on what we need to do to move Australia towards a target of 100 % renewables by 2020. (inspired by Al Gore’s We Can Solve it Campaign (100 % renewables in 10 years). Beyond Zero are providing visionary leadership and inspiring targets for people and Matts presentation showed the way we need to be thinking (and talking!) when it comes to the big shifts needed. They do a radio show on 3CR and its podcast so get into it!
He was joined by Elliot Fishman from the Institute of Sensible Transport for a panel afterwards who also displayed a strong grasp of the issues and gave the crowd clear and logical transport solutions that involved serious bike usage that you could immediately see would work if only the political will existed for this to happen. The message was loud and clear .. this is is not rocket science, its simply smarter ways of moving people.
One of the highlights included Tim Cotter’s excellent presentation on behaviour change and sustainability (his approach is deceptively simple and completely spot on, don’t try to change people’s values (they are in the most part just fine and it’s almost impossible to do anyway!) but instead convince them of the need for change (through education), empower them (give them the tools) and (most importantly) make the connection between their values and the sustainable things you want them to do. People will then most likely act in their own enlightened self interest. Simple!
I left the festival inspired by our southern cousins and the work they’ve been doing to move us in the right direction. I’ve returned to Sydney invigorated and excited by the challenge of bringing the city of sin in line with her greener sister. We have about 10 years to get the job done. All aboard!
Make a comment »
Furthering our efforts to be a sustainable organisation, Digital Eskimo have teamed up with Locavore who have installed a rooftop garden above our studio. The Locavore landscape gardeners designed and built a custom shade cloth ‘vegigloo’ and planted a range of herbs and vegetables, including mint, basil, lettuce, rocket, pumpkin, watermelon and corn.
The plants were chosen according to permaculture principles. Already surviving our Christmas break and a blisteringly hot start to the new year, it has started to produce a good crop. We shared our first harvest recently at our weekly friday night wrapup session, consisting of some green leaves – basil, mint and lettuce.
The garden is for nourishing our staff and is part of an integrated system at our studio. We collect organic waste in our kitchen and it is fed to our three worms we have in our basement garage (we’ve effectively converted our ‘car space’ into a ‘worm space’). Our worms produce very rich liquid and solid fertiliser, which is then fed into the soil in our rooftop garden and from that grows more food for our staff, closing the loop.
Read the rest of this entry »
Make a comment »
Design is for the large part one of the main causes of sustainability problems in today’s world. Too often design is caught up in creating the next meaningless flavour of the month. Pushing people to consume more and think less.
As designers we are often asked to create something new for the sake of NEW, when new isn’t necessarily more usable, functional, aesthetically pleasing or in anyway better. Although designers are not completely to blame, by being more responsible and sustainable in our approach to design we refuse to take part in the joint denial that is consumer capitalism.
So, on world usability day we at Digital Eskimo would like to make a call to our readers (especially designers!): be a leader; don’t do things today that make tomorrow worse. Rather than asking yourself which one is newer, brighter and superficially better, perhaps we should ask what does better really mean?
BTW .. This year’s theme is Transportation – a matter close to our green hearts … learn more at the official site.
Ohh and this post was written by our new Art Director, Christopher Potter who has joined us from the UK after running his own agency, Grass Blades for many years. Chris and i met on the launch of the original Toyota Prius back in 2001 and have stayed in touch ever since – his design is naturally considered and he brings a swag of flash and coding skills to the house. Ohh and he cooks a mean Burmese dish with his partner Cho, check out their hsa*ba book for tastey Burmese treats.
Make a comment »
Following on from the Mark Lee presentation i posted earlier, this article (titled provocatively Save us From our Timid Selves) from Peter Lewis at newmatilda.com stuck a chord for me. It’s about the need to reframe the climate conversation around positive opportunities rather than the negative reactionary approach so favoured over the years by those attempting to resist the tide of (neo-liberal/rampant consumerism/unsustainable/add your negative trend here) change.
Attempting to say ‘No”‘ to climate change is of course absurd but even saying no to cars for instance misses the point. What we need is positive alternatives and hence we should focus on developing and promoting those. Mobility services for instance, like our company bike fleet and the Go Get car share service we offer staff, actually deliver a better alternative than owning a car with it’s various costs for inner city eskimos. The result; none of our staff drive to work regularly.
Great examples of what can be achieved when you look for the practical and positive rather than the fundamentalist and negative can be found in Ezio Manzini’s Sustainability Everyday project. Manzini posits that the great shift we need (the revolution) like the seismic demographic shifts that have gone before it (the agrarian and industrial revolutions) will only occur when a critical mass of people see a better future for themselves by behaving radically different.
Climate change? Just say ‘yes’ (to positive alternatives) and we might just start changing people’s behaviour.
Last week I attended Sustainable Innovation at the Base of the Pyramid conference in Helsinki on the ways in which innovation and business can help the billions of people who are living in poverty. The model is known as the the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) approach which relies on entrepreneurial activity to create value and ultimately well-being through product and service (co)creation and provision instead of the old development aid or charity models.
The stand out speaker for me was Simona Rocchi, Director of Sustainable Design at Philips who described the ethos and methods behind the design of the Chulha smokeless stove, co-created in India with local communities and NGOs. It was inspiring to see design (and in particular a similar approach to design that we practice at Digital Eskimo) given centre stage of a conference on sustainable solutions (design rarely rates a mention in my experience).
The award winning stove exemplifies the potential of co-designing in context with all stakeholders and also represents an innovative model of IP ownership (Philips is sharing it with the community) as well as the many benefits that can flow to corporations that participate in society in this way.
When I talk of design i’m usually referring to more than just graphic design … more
Read the rest of this entry »
Make a comment »
Kristen Le Mesurier’s recent article on sustainable offices ran in the Sydney Morning Herald this week. It featured myself (with a 5 year old photo bless her heart!) and Rick Millen from Pri
cewaterhouseCoopers and Kate Noble from the ACF discussing the value and impact of sustainable business operations.
We, of course have been quite active and vocal in our efforts to walk the talk as it were; and continue to improve the way we do things. (Our current studio renovations project will feature many sustainability inspired innovations which we’ll share with you as they become reality). To her credit Kristen included a point i often raise in interviews (though it rarely seems to get through the editors) regarding the operational aspect of a company’s sustainability …
“… And while all of these sustainable operational initiatives are important and commendable, they are really just the tip of the iceberg. What is really important is the impact companies have on the world in terms of the actual work they do.”
“The actions we inspire, enable and facilitate are by far the biggest part of our ecological footprint, that’s the chunk of the iceberg under the waterline,” Gravina says.
When talking about design agencies in particular; the iceberg is the proverbial elephant in the room.
Laying down a challenge to other companies, Digital Eskimo recently carbon offset the entire history of the agency, dating back to 2001. We calculated our carbon emissions with our friends at Climate Friendly and offset the lot, effectively cleaning up the (relatively small given our ecological ways) mess we’d left behind on our way to becoming Sydney’s pre-eminent sustainability focussed design agency.
We now challenge other companies to do the same. As we all sit and wait for what looks like a pretty lacklustre response from the government to the Gaurnaut review, we as industry leaders can do a lot to set the pace.
So what’s your company doing about it’s past emissions?
Make a comment »