The Toyota Flower
Car companies today are doing more than ever to create more energy-efficient cars, cars that get better gas mileage, and cars that rely on emerging technologies like fuel cells, hydrogen, and electric motors. It’s very exciting–and Toyota has taken innovation to a whole new level and decided to make a great effort in reducing CO2 [...]
Compostmodern # 4
Last Thursday was the final night of four compostmodern meet-ups through the Baltimore AIGA. The final video for discussion was of Nathan Shedroff who addressed a few key strategies for becoming a more sustainable designer. Here is a brief sum up of some of the biggest points to consider for your next design project: 1. [...]
Compostmodern Convergence #3
I really can’t say enough about Emily Pilloton. We watched a 30-minute speech given by the 27-year-old last week at AIGA’s Compostmodern gathering. I was blown away. She is clear, driven and above all else, carries a humble disposition about her position in the world. She believes the more the merrier when it comes to [...]
Compostmodern Convergence #2
Happy Earth Day. I had the privilege of attending AIGA’S second of four sessions geared toward the 2009 Compostmodern Workshop in SanFran. If last week was about scale, this week was definately about statistics. We watched two videos, one from Michel Gelobeter and the other from Saul Griffith. You might know of Saul through wattzon.com. [...]
Compostmodern Convergence #1
Last night I participated in the first of a 4 session meetup through AIGA to discuss the role of the designer in sustainability. The discussion was based around a serious of videos from the 2009 Compostmodern Workshop in San Francisco and the focus of last night’s discussion was scale. To start off the evening we [...]
New Work :: Elevation Burger
Ever since I heard of the concept behind Elevation Burger, I knew we had to find a way to work with them. They are a rapidly growing, fast-casual concept serving 100% organic beef burgers and fresh-cut french fries cooked in heart-healthy olive oil. The concept began in 2005 and is growing fast, largely because of [...]
Waste Not
Check it out – another continuation from THIS blog post. These are small business card-sized seed cards we did to promote The Brick Companies’ environmental stewardship e-brochure. They allow for tangibility while minimizing waste: Aren’t they beautiful? Garret Ohm http://www.orange-blog.com
Go America!
We’re learning how to drive less! CNN reports: Overall, Americans drove 53.2 billion fewer miles November through June than they did over the same eight-month period a year earlier, according to the highway agency’s latest monthly report on driving. That’s a larger decline than the 49.3 billion fewer miles driven by Americans over the entire [...]
Sustainable Promotional Items
Promotional items are notorious for generating useless waste. So if you’re going to buy 20,000 of something to give away, why not do it right? This is a great resource that we’re definitely going to use: http://ecoimprints.logomall.com/default.aspx Thanks, Brandflakes. Garret Ohm http://www.orange-element.com
I Love TerraCycle
I have been seriously enamored with the concept and culture of this business since I first learned about it months ago, but EJ pointed out a new program that made me fall in love with them all over again. She sent me this link for TerraCycle Brigades: http://www.terracycle.net/brigades/ TerraCycle Brigades is a movement where TerraCycle [...]
Water Graffiti
Thanks to Beth Brady for passing along a very cool video about a British graffiti artist named Moose who has made his mark by creating clean graffiti. Clean graffiti, often referred to as reverse graffiti, is a method in which he finds extremely dirty urban surfaces and strategically cleans areas of them to form art, [...]
Weird Direct Mail Strategy…
As a design + visual communications firm that still does quite a bit of print work, we tend to be very strategic in crafting direct mail strategies for our clients. We want to first ensure that the purpose of the piece will be accomplished by our creative work, meaning that our advertising objective is met [...]
A Couple of Cool Links
I’ve been really busy lately developing a proposal for some work for a really great higher learning institution, but I’m happy (relieved) to say that I’m finally finished. I’m really happy with the way it turned out and pumped about our chances. I hope to have more news on this in the next month or [...]
New Green Technology
Aaron passed me a link this morning that got me pretty excited. It’s about a technology that I didn’t really know much about, but that looks really promising for generating energy in an efficient, clean way using municipal solid waste (garbage) and construction and development waste. It seems our friend and former client Jason Hardebeck, [...]
GOforChange
I wanted to pass along a new site that a friend from the CSBA passed along to me recently dealing with sustainable business. The site/movement is called GOforChange and you can see it here: http://www.GOforChange.com. It is essentially a website that presents stories of positive change in the Baltimore region. It includes articles, a social [...]
Elephant Dung
Yesterday, in true EJ fashion, she sent an email to the entire Orange Element staff that asked simply “Who left the elephant poo on my desk? Cool!” For a while I was really confused. Why would elephant poo be on her desk, much less in our office? And why would she think that was cool? [...]
Design Can Change
Our good friend Rachael from Tilt sent me this link about how the design community in Baltimore and beyond can band together to support positive global climate change through sustainable design. Pretty good stuff, so check it out and take the pledge: http://www.designcanchange.org/ Garret Ohm http://www.orange-element.com
I’m On Board
Hi all – I’m very proud to announce that I have been selected as an interim board member of the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance. I couldn’t be happier about this, both because it’s an extraordinary young organization that has a lot of potential and because it furthers Orange Element’s commitment to operating as a sustainable [...]
OE Client, TBC, In Today’s BBJ
One of our clients, who also happens to be one of the folks I mentioned in yesterday’s post about the Chesapeake Bay Foundation event was featured in an article in today’s Baltimore Business Journal today. The article was about the efforts The Brick Companies has made both at their headquarters but also at their portfolio [...]
Designing For Renewable Energy
Nearly a year ago, The US Department of Energy asked us to create a Myspace Page for their Solar Decathlon competition. In addition, we also volunteered at the event and further realized what an important cause we were working for. Shortly after the competition, we also created a Myspace Page for the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen [...]
