Designer Alain Bertreau creates simple furniture that cuts out excess materials and effort, leaves an overall serene and minimalistic impression, and packs light. We’ve taken a look at his Instant Chair and his Modular Fence Chair. Previously, we just glanced at his latest project, the Cover stool challenges, but the way our notion of package design by turning a cardboard box into the base of a waste-free pouf.

The Cover stool comes in (as?) a sturdy box with a foam pad inside. Just zip the pad around the box and you’ve killed two birds with one stone-assembly & clean-up. When its reached the end of its life, you can even send the box off to recycling.

In a MocoLoco interview last May, Berteau said this to creating more stuff in an overflowing world: “It’s very easy to design with style but it’s really difficult to invent relevant solutions. Things can always be improved…at least I’m trying.”

+ Index Award
+ Alain Bertreau

Via MocoLoco

London based Graphic Design agency, Studio8 Design, have designed this beautiful example of environmentally friendly graphic design. The At This Rate booklet and poster were produced to raise awareness of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest for the US-based charity Rainforest Action Network.

Each booklet is made from only one sheet of FSC certified paper, folding out from the cover into a 12-page concertina, maximising the sheet and minimising waste. Proceeds all go to Rainforest Action Network. Photographs by Giles Revell.

+ Studio8 Design
+ At This Rate (Book) £6.99
+ At This Rate (Poster) £6.99
+ Rainforest Action Network
+ Giles Revell

We’re guilty of overlooking good green graphic design sometimes on Inhabitat, but here’s a great example of visual communication as an effective tool for environmental and social change. London-based illustrator Jody Barton is just one example of the power of graphics as an education tool, producing a plethora of bold illustrations focused on environmental crises. Using hand-drawn typography, Barton’s illustrations evoke preconceived notions, stereotypes, and challenge beliefs around these issues, and make us stop to think about our environmental impact.

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Check out this brilliant World Wildlife Fund ad campaign in the form of bathroom towel dispensers! Demonstrating that Saatchi and Saatchi is the undisputed king of transforming advertising into an art form, this genius PSA integrates a crucial environmental message into the built environment. Shown above is the latest example of clever marketing concept ingeniously integrated into the most banal space: a public restroom. These paper towel dispensers have a cut out the shape of South America through which a stack of green paper towels illustrates the green rain forest canopy of the continent. As the paper towel dispenser is slowly drained of its green paper towels, we see the greenness slowly drained out of South America, symbolizing the nasty environmental impact of disposable paper towels.

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The art of furoshiki gift wrapping is a time-honored, ancient tradition, and Montreal-based Posch designs has put a new twist on this eco-friendly packaging concept with its latest reusable, silk fabric Biota Collection wraps. Rid yourself of the guilt of holiday gift wrapping excess and throw-away packaging by swaddling your gifts for loved ones in these gorgeous silk squares that can be used as a stylish alternative to paper wrapping. It’s gift giving with a conscience and a flair for luxury that lasts.

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My Sust House is a Glaswegian approach to sustainable education, exposing kids and teenagers to issues of sustainability in design and planning through an accessible outlet: the Internet. This interactive game is narrated by two fetching Scottish cartoon characters and comes complete with an introduction on sustainability and two games dedicated to exploring “what sustainability means and how it relates to our homes.” As Sean Connery knows, even the most mundane things can be made appealing through the addition of a Scottish accent, and this charming interactive education website lives up to that rule. Even the most diehard non-greenies will be charmed by this cute interactive website.

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Bringing graphic design back to its roots and creativity, Princeton Architectural Press launched D.I.Y. Kids in October 2007, a book by twin sister design-duo Ellen and Julia Lupton, founders of Design Your Life. Beautifully illustrated with “real artwork by real children”, D.I.Y. Kids engages young people to create from existing things, from binding their own books, sewing their own clothes, making stickers, logos, clothespin dolls, box buildings, graffiti furniture, ribbon accessories, and many more projects. What a fab way to get those creative juices flowing while recycling!!

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If you’re looking for a way to spruce up your nursery and expand your knowledge of the animal kingdom, this Alphabet of the Endangered Species in the British Isles is indeed a “timely take on A-Z”. With punchy, clean graphics and playful, perfectly composed quadrants, this poster is sure to be a hit in any baby room.

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Social Design Network Design21 announced their latest design competition this week; the challenge - to design the official logo for “Stories from the Field: The United Nations Documentary Film Festival”.

The Prize
$5000

DEADLINE
The deadline for this fabulous competition is November 26th - so get going!

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For all you graphically-minded designers out there, here’s your chance to shine: DesignBoom recently announced its latest design competition, Love Your Earth, which asks graphic designers to create a graphic artwork to raise awareness on global issues affecting the planet. The deadline is September 8, 2007, three winners will be awarded cash prizes, and a shortlist of honorable mentions will be featured at 100% Design Tokyo this fall. Check out DesignBoom for all the details and put those graphic design caps on!

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We just spotted this hilarious cartoon on greenwashing by Tom Fishburne. I think it speaks for itself on the humorous lengths that some brands will go to get on the eco bandwagon.

+ Tom Fishburne

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Leave it to the clever Dutch to brighten up your daily trip to the mailbox… with their blooming postage stamps, you can affix some living flora to that thank you note or birthday card! Dutch postal service TNT recently announced the production and sale of the seeded stamps, which were designed by Martin van Vreden, and hold the seeds of a variety of flowers, including petunias.

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We’re always enamored with flat pack packaging for efficient transport and minimal waste, but here’s a light design that brings a bright idea to packaging by eliminating it all together. Lite2Go’s packaging doubles as the actual lamp shade so there is almost no waste, excluding the label and the instructions for assembly which are printed on recycled paper using environmentally friendly inks.

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How do you make your business card stand out? Make it grow! We’re seeing a lot of clever business cards perfect for your green thumb, and its about time! Jamie Wieck breathes new life into business cards with his Growing Business Card. This little number transforms from a regular business card to miniature house plant, sprouting alfalfa or cress when watered. Who wouldn’t want this on their desk?

+ Designer Jamie Wieck

+ Similar Botanical Business cards

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With all the business cards we’re being inundated with this week (the downside of trade-shows), its nice to find business cards that stand out from the crowd and add a little greenery to your day. Here’s a clever and useful little business card design that perfectly expresses the mission of the company it represents: landscape architecture firm Tur & Partner. Add a little light and water to this seeded business card and in a couple days, you’ve got yourself a professionally landscaped miniature garden. Seeds embedded into the card sprout right through the holes in the plan printed on the card. This creative card was designed by Jung von Matt of Germany.

Via BLDGBLOG

Last week we announced Sigg’s “What’s your Eco-Style” bottle design competition- a post that was met with comments and questions from intrigued readers wanting to know more about the company, their production techniques, particularly the choice to use aluminum as a drinking vessel.

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The race is on! In case you haven’t been paying attention to Inhabitat the last few days, we’ve opened our Green T-Shirt Design Competition up for voting, and we are getting a slew of opinions from you guys left and right. Three of our finalists have emerged in the lead: “I Give A Hoot,” “Global Greenery,” and “Tree/Root/Lungs/Heart” and it looks like its going to be a tight race! We’re counting on all you readers to weigh in during these final hours to help us pick the best design for Inhabitat.
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One of the easiest things you can do to lead a greener life is to say no to disposable plastic water bottles. And one of our favorite companies, SIGG, makes this easy and stylish with their Swiss-designed aluminum, taste-inert, eco-friendly water bottles. And now they’ve announced their ‘What’s Your Eco-Style?’ bottle design competition in celebration of the recently passed Earth Day. The company is looking for YOU to design their next bottle to join their already fabulous and graphically-stunning collection of drinking vessels. Visit their website for more information on the competition, the company, and the unique manufacturing processes in which the bottles are made from a single hockey-puck sized piece of aluminum!

+ SIGG ‘What’s Your Eco-Style’ Competition

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If you’ve been following our Green T-Shirt Competition, then hopefully you realize that today is your LAST CHANCE to get your designs in to us. The competition ends tonight at MIDNIGHT, and its really easy to submit designs to us - and the prizes are great - so for all you green and graphically-inclined readers out there, SUBMIT TODAY!

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE to become the next Inhabitat graphic design star.

DEADLINE IS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT, APRIL 20th!

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A temporary flood sent avatars scrambling for the rooftops in several virtual places, including London, the Netherlands, and Ibiza. David de Rothschild, founder of Adventure Ecology, staged the global warming related flood in the popular virtual world Second Life. Read the National Geographic account for the full story. Apparently avatars were calm, some pub going avatars just climbed into boats and continued on with their pints while the conversation shifted to global warming.

p.s. New Yorkers, don’t forget to sign up for Sea of People, and you cannot send your avatar for this one!

Via fiftyRX3

Following today’s theme of animal excrement as viable design material (dare I say Tuesday = “Poo”sday?), here’s another great example of turning waste into function. It turns out elephant dung is chock-full of the fibrous materials ideal for making paper. The Great Elephant PooPoo Paper Company collects the waste from elephant conservation parks, rinse, boil, and color it, and add a dash of other natural goodness like banana and pineapple tree fibers. The sheets are even formed naturally, the paper pulp poured and into a tray angled against a tree, facing the sun to dry. It doesn’t get much more pure than that! Plus the notecards, stationery, and envelopes are simple, colorful, and many boast the image of the company’s namesake “elefriends.”

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Green Graphic Design: Step 1, Your Printer and You

Printers and Graphic Designers have long lived in entwined chaos, each attempting to interpret the electronic wizards living within their individual computing systems. Logic suggests that adding environmental concerns to this equation will only serve to exasperate this already malfunctioning system. Fortunately for Green Graphic Designers (and printers), these days are long gone. Gone are the days we send our designs into the ether hoping to receive perfect pieces of printed matter on the other end (…right).

The green path of the future involves getting intimate with your favorite printer.

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