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I picked up this card sometime ago at Frog Design event, it's certainly not subtle or minimal, it shouts and screams at you, but it does give you a great flavor of the place.

Most business cards, don't work this hard.



Posted by Ed Cotton Last week, the French communication giant Havas announced it plans to make itself into a greener company by outlining a set of initiatives to reduce its carbon footprint.

The goal is to reduce company-wide C02 by 20% by 2009.

The bulk of the initiative is based on buying carbon offsets, but it also includes employee training and reductions backs on energy, paper and business travel.

Expect every global agency network to announce a similar initiaitve in the coming weeks.

The energy produced creating and running ads in considerable.

So look out for green production companies, TV spots created using wind power (BBDO's ad for GE's wind power initiatives should be produced using wind power?), more glossy magazines printed on recycled paper, solar powered radio stations and greener search engines.

Obviously, product designers will have the opportunity to make the most difference and recently frog design threw down the gauntlet with a plan for a Kyoto style treaty that asks for the following actions.

Collectively:

• Helping craft a larger social equity protocol for the design community


• Publicly ratifying that agreement, and committing to its compliance


• Contributing to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design


• Advancing the intellectual understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective

Individually:

• Offering green analysis to clients, or partnering with others to conduct this analysis


• Providing material alternatives for sustainable product development


• Investigating manufacturing processes and rewarding green innovation


• Minimizing environmental impact from prototyping or model-making activity


• Publicly reporting the carbon footprint of our firms


• Becoming educated about the environmental impact of our work

It's unlikely that we will see the global communication networks coming together to create such initiaitve, instead we expect agencies to try and use this as a source of competitive advantage.

However, media organizations might be the ones who start working together to issue standards and plans to tackle the climate change issue.



Posted by Ed Cotton Last night, the fine people at frog design, San Francisco hosted an interesting discussion on “The Many Shades of Green”. They assembled three very interesting individuals who explored the issue from three different perspectives. Dr Charles Ehrhart of CARE who looked at the global impact, of Kirsten Ritchie of Gensler who examined the corporate impact and of Ashley Menger of frog who talked about her personal experiences with the issue.

Some interesting themes and ideas emerged:

Dr Charles Ehrhart, Coordinator of CARE International’s Poverty and Climate Change Initiative

“Climate change is happening, we’ve got to try and stop catastrophic climate change.”

All non-profits need to make sure they are minimizing their environmental impacts and carbon footprint. This has significant implications for an organization like CARE who are shipping food supplies to people in need.

The importance of political action to try and change decisions that are being made today that will negatively impact generations for years to come- such as the decision to build more coal fired plants.

Design for a climate changed future. Don’t consider today, understand the realities of tomorrow and design for it.

Help the developing countries to grow by allowing them to do it with minimal impact on the environment.

Kirsten Ritchie, Director of Sustainable Design, Gensler

“The issue of the environment has moved from a moral imperative to an economic one.”

Branding matters with green because it’s a category created by environmental engineers, not marketers.

“It’s hard to spell Sustainability, let alone pronounce it”

EnergyStar and Leed were examples of good green branding in action.

Standards are everything. You can’t be green without the proof, so certification and standards matter. Organic labeling is an example of a system failure, but Fairtrade and Leed had got it right
 
Ashley Menger, Design Analyst, frog design

Ashley’s motivation was drive by her desire to making the green issue a personal one, where her experience could inform design decisions.

To do this, Ashley developed “Trash Talk” a program where "frogs" get the chance to carry their trash around with them everywhere for two weeks. Ashley talked about how this experience informed her projects and the story of her first piece of trash; a home thermostat that she later discovered contains mercury.

Trash Talk has now become a global, company-wide initiative with dozens of frog employees wanting to participate by carrying around their trash for two weeks and  blogging their experiences.

Overall, the evening added some perspective to the importance, complexity and communication challenges of the green issue.



Posted by Ed Cotton