Come see MSLK’s eco-art installation, Take-Less, at Brooklyn’s Dumbo Arts Festival on September 24th – 26th!

We’re pleased to be a part of this amazingly creative event once again, building on the success of last year’s event. Our project can be seen on Washington Street, the center of all the action for DUMBO’s annual art festival.

The event itself is described by the event planners as a showcase for: “touchable, accessible, and interactive art, on a scale that makes it the nation’s largest urban forum for experimental art.”

For over 55 years, the I.D. Annual Design Review has recognized the best in graphic, environmental, product, and furniture design. We are very proud that MSLK’s own Sheri L Koetting has taken her place among a jury of the field’s leading practitioners. Her voice and sensibility played a large role in the winners chosen this year in the graphics category. Viewing everything through a lens of sustainability, Sheri not only examined the purpose and aesthetics of each piece, she questioned its material usage and life expectancy.

You can see all of the winning pieces on view now until September 10^th at the AIGA National Design Center. Read more to view some of the winners and see what Sheri had to say about each of the pieces.

Proctor and Gamble unveiled last week a renewable sugarcane based alternative to plastic that will be implemented on their Pantene Pro-V, CoverGirl, and international Max Factor product lines over the next 2 years. This is truly groundbreaking news and frankly has me more excited about the future of mass production than I have been in a long time. Here’s why:

Brooklyn seems to tbe the epicenter of New York City’s most forward-thinking green initiatives. Whether it’s urban farms, green roofs, farm-to-plate initiatives, or green buildings themselves — it’s got it all.

MSLK is proud to be partnering with Brooklyn Ecopolis, a non-profit 501(c)3, community-based education and resource center aimed at promoting access to sustainable products, services, and innovations for healthy living.

Busy. That’s one word to describe things at MSLK these days.

While we have the benefit of working on many inspiring projects for our clients, we’re also hard at work on Take-Less, the third in a trilogy of what we’ve come to call eco-art installations. In an effort to be greener, we’re using our talents to focus people on the sheer volume of plastic we all consume in our daily lives. Whether it’s plastic bags, plastic water bottles, or the durable and resilient plastic containers we use for a moment with our take-out food — this cheap plastic comes at a cost.

The commercial states. “If we all made a change, it could lead to some pretty amazing things… A bio-degradable bag made from plants is Sun Chips change for a better tomorrow. What will yours be?” Personally, I find this to be most inspirational and authentic commercial I’ve seen in a long time. It features men, women and children covering up take-out waste on the beach, a plastic bag in the tree, and discarded appliances and trucks. Kuddos to Sun Chips, their solar powered plant, plant based, compostable bag.

As a business owner I learned long ago that designing great projects is one thing, but leading a client towards entrusting you with their brand is an incredibly crucial —and often overlooked — part of the process.

Recently I organized a panel discussion for Spark Design Professionals and AIGA/NY to explore how during initial business conversations some of New York City’s top green designers are able to shape projects into environmentally friendly communications. I wanted to glean an inside perspective on what these successful advocates did to shift the conversation beyond simple aesthetics and dig deeper into the purpose of the promotion, the materials, and manufacturing process used.

Last week I had the pleasure of traveling out to Cincinnati Ohio to review over 350 submissions of the best graphic design created in 2009. The entries came from all over the globe and ranged from small direct mail pieces to motion graphics and large scale environmental signage programs.

Reviewing this many entries and seeking out the absolute best examples of design is a challenging process. Throughout the years, I.D.’s design review has chronicled the evolution of design, and the work included has come to represent the most avant garde style, materials, and subject matter relevant to that time period. Therefore, it was important to me to not only consider the superior visual beauty of a piece, but the environmental impact as well.

Readymade, the book by the founders of the magazine with the same name, is a perfect marriage between sustainability and stellar book design. It features dozens of useful projects (organized by material: paper, plastic, wood, metal, glass, and fabric) most of which can be created with discarded materials from around the house. Although the publication has been out for a few years, I constantly return to appreciating the clarity of its design vision. If you love DIY and/or an amazing book with tons of projects and humorous tidbits and facts, this is the must-have for your library.

Our design organization, Spark, and the AIGA/NY (Association of Professional Design, New York Chapter) are coming together to host the AIGA’s first series of green events for graphic design on April 6th, 2010. As the current President of Spark and Director of Outreach for the AIGA’s Center for Sustainable Design, I will be moderating the panel discussion on “How to Lead Clients Towards Being Green.”

Aimed at principals of design firms and directors of new business, this conversation will dig into the sales process, and seeks to uncover  practices that firms large and small can implement to lead even the most ecologically unaware clients towards more sustainable practices.