Thesis Process Book

there is a process to this madness Amanda Keenan • core project Process journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

start of the process

8

What is the Big Idea?

14

Types of Posters

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The Issues

18

Making Connections: Handmade, Activism, Posters

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The Way it Used to be Done.

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Projected Outcome at Year End.

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The Target

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One Poster a Day

The breakdown of a poster 38

The Analysis of a Poster

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Street Art

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Interactive Posters

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Guerilla Activism & Marketing

Major Discovery 54

Colours that Change

56

Thermochromic Ink

Detailed search for info 60

Forests

66

Water Resources

70

Carbon Emissions

72

Fish

75

Extinction

Design Process 83

Sketch Book Notes

97

Sketch Book Ideas

113

Concept Development

FINAL DESIGNS

125

Final Poster Designs

139

The Details & How I made them

Last words 149

Last Words

Sources 153

Sources

start of the process

What is the Big

Idea?!

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Handmade Posters With A Message Of Social Change The issues our planet is facing regarding global warming, disease, poverty, garbage, among countless others seem to be issues that are out of sight and therefore out of mind for the general public. I plan to bring awareness to a number of different issues that are affecting us and the planet by returning to the hand made roots of design techniques, such as screen printing, stenciling, letterpress and any other hand made techniques. I believe that there is something special and of value in a design that is hand made, especially in our digital age, where our lives are travelling faster than we can count and we’re exposed constantly to more meaningless advertising. There is just something about hand made things that just seem more valuable, and my thought is that these messages about our environment, our planet, need to be valued.

My core project will be a campaign for social change through designing posters in non conventional ways. Through these methods I will activate social awareness and change throughout the city of Toronto with the added value of hand made design. By researching and using various non-conventional hand made design methods, I feel that I will grow creatively as a designer.

THE NEED The public needs to be made aware that the choices that they are making directly affect many global issues. They have the choice whether to contribute to the destruction or not and I plan to promote positive change. I plan on designing the posters to portray a hopeful message of change. The world needs to change rapidly at this point and if the public doesn’t know what is happening or what can be done, then nothing will change, so the first step is to bring awareness.

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY Today marks the first day of this scary thing called (thesis) core project. And though I walked into this room scared for what was coming... fearing for my life in a tiny

THE INITIAL AUDIENCE The audience for this core project would be the general public who is unaware of the disasters that are taking place on the planet, specifically focusing on those who don’t care and those who don’t care to know.

THE INITIAL RESEARCH My initial research included learning about the history of posters, and specifically the communication effects that these posters had during such times of revolutions or war – these handmade posters had a significant effect during the Russian Revolution and also with WWI and WWII in government propaganda.

Posters were a primary method of communication for many years prior to our increases in digital technologies. Now in this day in age, posters can be printed out by anyone and the value as a form of communication has rapidly decreased.

My research includes the search into the value of handmade things in our digital world. Looking around the Toronto craft community, there seems to be a reaction going on and a resurgence back into hand made design.

My initial research also included exploration into global issues that I feel need greater awareness – issues such as climate change, plastics, chemicals, garbage, infertility... etc. These and many more issues will be the focus of my posters. I have also done research into various handmade tactics in design, and taken screen printing classes and signed up for letterpress workshops in the city.

way — I came out feeling an overall sense of excitement of what was coming. I’m hopeful that by the end of the year I will have a design project that I will be proud of.

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So now that I have my idea, where do I start? I started by designing this book. I chose metallophile Sp8 as the heading & subheadings typeface. It’s history and development suits my project perfectly! It’s based on an 8-point Futura in hot metal type back from the 40’s. What a perfect font for a project that has to do with looking back into the handmade crafts of design. I can almost feel the heat of the hot metal as it melts in this font.

During this week I also started with my research into binding methods and layout options as a way to inspire the look of this book. One is for sure, and that is that I strongly believe that creating using handmade processes will create more value in the messages I want to showcase. My next step in that would be to get access to the printmaking department’s screen printing and letter press studio.

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY These are my original thoughts of how this process book should look. As you can see now, my thoughts changed, and I decided to take a more classical approach that was more sophisticated and not as grungy. I believe that just because my designs have been handmade, that does not mean the book that shows the progress should beat you over the head with that idea. I believe that there is a great deal of charm and classiness to handmade craft, and I believe that this book conveys that message of clarity, clearer.

During the 2nd week of Core Project, I did some observational research around the city to find spaces that are not being utilized as spaces of public communication – also as a possible space to hang posters of protest or activist messages.

There are loads of spots in Toronto that are not being utilized – spots that could really be used to make a positive message about the world and how we’re treating it and ourselves. The idea is that I could use these locations, like the tree or the garbage, as places to put up posters that directly relate to what I am hanging them on. The tree or the enormous post could be a message about paper usage.

The bicycle racks could be used as a message regarding the amount of emissions saved from doing such a good deed.

Regarding the large post, I was thinking that it might be interesting to literally cut through the paper to reveal the actual post to portray a message of paper and ink usage. It would be very tactile an noticeable.

The point of this research was to discover some possible places to display a message of activism – places that are not being used to display a message or places that could use to make a new message (as in the case of the large post).

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Before the invention of the printing press, news of events was spread by town criers with loud voices — to an illiterate population.

Canada's National Art Centre

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TYPES OF POSTERS • Commercial posters are a form of Persuasion • Entertainment posters let people know about events • Awareness Poster don’t attempt to sell anything, they are put up as public services • Cultural Posters have to do with events happening at cultural places such as the AGO and other museums.

• Political Posters attempt to win you over • Social Event posters may publicize community gatherings • Propaganda posters make a positive or negative statement about the government or corporations

WHAT’S A POSTER TO DO? Posters need to grab attention, they need to be visually dynamic and be able to stand out of the crowd of massive media. These media corporations spend billions of dollars to appear better, stronger or faster than their competition.

Q: How do I compete with the corporations that spend millions on ads?

A: META MESSAGING! The idea that a poster can communicate on a deeper level, using multiple messages, saying a number of things as the same time. Meta messaging also refers to the vibe a communication gives off. It is what people feel when seeing the poster.

POSTERS ARE GREAT, AREN’T THEY? It is communication by visual means – people either get the message or they don’t. There is no time to make up for a things that are lost in translation. It should be clear, concise and above all, leave an impression.

Posters give hope, they can inform, they can make change.

Posters are not just some awfully annoying piece of ripped up paper stuck to a telephone pole. Of course there are posters like that, but I don’t think that it is where the truly great poster belong.

So where do posters belong?

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Posters deserve another chance!

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY Throughout the week, I have started considering the affects of a poster. Back in the day when moveable type was first invented, Posters were cherished, and a viable means of communication. Now it seems that posters have just become part of mass media in general – people pass by them without noticing. The amount of media and advertising we are exposed to on a daily basis has been estimated at 3000+ by the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States.

What happened to the poster? It is time for a come back!

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WHAT’S THE MATTER ?

RESOURCES :

www.treehugger.com planetgreen.discovery.com adbusters magazine: sept/oct 09 issue

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THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY This week, I started by thinking about what messages I want to communicate through a poster. One thing is for sure – that I have lots of issues regarding how, we as a species are treating the world, and the massive affects it has on us and the planet. I began by reaching into issues that I slightly knew about but wanted to find out more.

After reading about all these issues I realized that we (as humans) seem to value money more than our existence. Greed is controlling climate change, and we are sacrificing our own existence for economic growth.

THE ISSUES AIR QUALITY The poor quality of our air is due to pollution – coal plants, transportation and above all deforestation of massive areas on the planet are releasing more greenhouse gases than transportation globally – at about 30%.

WATER With the increasing population, a massive drought, contaminated water or no water at all is becoming common. Some leading experts, it is believed that this shortage will lead to wars fought over water.

SOIL It takes 1000 years to grow 1˝ of soil. Massive agricultural industries are depleting this precious resource.

FORESTS Deforestation is a epidemic. Canada’s boreal forest is being slaughtered for toilet paper.

20% of the world’s oxygen has been chopped from the Amazon Rainforest for cattle ranching, soy farming and logging. 2 BILLION tons of C02 enter the atmosphere every year from the slashing and burning of the rainforest.

It is the leading cause of global warming.

OCEANS There is an increased amount of chemicals, plastics and garbage that are filling our oceans, and as a result have created the amount of ‘dead zones’ in oceans. These areas are lowoxygen areas and do not sustain life, as a result 90% of edible fish will be gone 2048.

LIFE Scientists around the world agree that we are currently in the 6th great mass extinction – the largest in 65 million years! 30,000 species are disappearing every year, meaning that three species go extinct every hour! The earth is not able to support life the way it once was, and we as humans are not immune.

How much more will be sacrificed for economic growth?

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THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY Week 5 was all about connection. Connecting these points of knowledge.

The (sometimes) overwhelmingly depressing knowledge. At times I feel like I should just put on one of the sandwich boards that say “THE END IS HERE!”. I would feel a bit like a lunatic doing that though. I need to be taken seriously. These issues that I am concerned with are real, and the world needs to be knowledgeable about what is going on in order to make a change. You can not change something if you don’t know what needs fixing. This week I concentrated on developing a theme, sorting out all my thoughts of what my issues even where. I also questioned what my core project was really about.

I concluded that I have 3 main avenues I want to explore.

making connections

HANDMADE ACTIVISM POSTERS 18

HANDMADE In my opinion, the idea of something being handmade makes it more valuable. This is because I know someone would have spent time and effort to make it. There is something about a handmade item that is more unique, more special, and in turn the person interacting with it feels like they are part of something unique. I explored aspects of handmade methods – things like screen printing, graffiti, letterpressing, knitting...

There is a new movement starting up lately that leads me to believe that there is a reaction to the current state of our fast moving world. The slow movement is a new cultural movement that is attempting to have people slow down and enjoy their life! For some reason people have thrived off the speed of our technology. We have become so used to having everything in an instant! 3 seconds is too long to wait for a website to load, and people start clicking feverishly... “Oh it must be down!”, meanwhile it has only been three whole seconds.

Why are there shortcut keys? Do we really not have the time to move the mouse to the other side of the screen? There is a backlash from all this craziness, and I believe that it is our very own Arts & Crafts movement. It’s a way to slow down, and enjoy the world around us. There are more craft shows than ever before. There are knitting clubs and scrapbooking groups! There is a movement, I’m sure of it.

ACTIVISM It seems like I have lots of issues. The greed of humanity being at the top of the list – it seems to lead to everything else. We stomp all over the planet and by doing so, it is going to have tremendous effects on our life... if there is any left. I wonder if people really knew what impact they were making with the decisions?

I wonder if they know? I wonder if they would care if they did know? And if not, how would I make them care... because it may not being important to them, but it is important to me... and it is important to any future generations. I wondered how to convince someone to do the right thing. They probably know what the right thing is... well as long as they knew what the issue was.

I think that perhaps KINDNESS is the answer. Could it be that simple? Tell people just how great they are, and how great it is that they walked to work today (or whatever the small good deed is). Praise! Could I create a kindness revolution that would ultimately impact the state of our existence?

POSTER What does a poster really do? I believe that it communicates an idea to the masses! It is usually ‘posted’... so I looked up POST in the dictionary and it brought me to a place in my thinking that made me realize that a poster does not have to be on a wall. People post things all over the place; and most recently blogs and social media have become places of mass posting. People post ideas, messages, rants... whatever they feel like, and in our world it has become as easy as pie. Why were posters so great back in the day of AM Cassandre? Why were they valued as works of art? A designer that actually got to sign his/her work! That’s incredible. What happened?

Hmm... Maybe the technology monster got to us.

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the way it used to be done Looking through tons of vintage poster from the 1900’s was fascinating when it came to analyzing what I thought made them successful. In every example, the message is clear, concise and leaves the viewer with an emotional response.

The L'Atlantique poster by AM Cassandre happens to be one of my most favourite posters ever made. It’s grand and

yet elegant, representing such power and might! The posters seem to interact with the viewer. One thing is for sure here, and that is all the posters that were successful in the past are timeless, they have not lost their presence, and their ability to communicate a message.

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY As week 6 flew by, I began looking into inspiring successful vintage posters.

I am trying to figure out how to get the quality and presence back. What are the things that make these posters tick? I also began to think about how I envision this project at the end of this journey. Will it be something that I am proud of, will it be more? Will it get me my dream job? Will it show people who I really am? — What I’m about, my passions and my beliefs?

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what will this project be in 2010?

It was difficult to think what I would want to achieve when this is all over. The most important aspect to my project is that I want to get my message noticed. I want to communicate a message that will change the way people look at the world. I want it to be hopeful. If I have any chance at making a change at all, I need to be seen.

I think it would be great to stir up some controversy – get people talking. I was thinking that a city-wide exhibit or campaign would be interesting to see. I want to get the idea across that handmade design is a viable form of expression and design.

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WHO IS THIS FOR? THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY This week was also about who my audience really is. I explored what methods I could use to get to them, and what I feel they should take away.

As you will read the media is my audience, and so I decided to look further into one avenue of media – social media and the internet. There is plenty that is currently happening online in regards to ideas being spread. It is probably the fastest way to spread news in our current time and so I feel that perhaps there is an avenue to explore here, regarding posters.

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seaking a TARGET THE AUDIENCE After a discussion with my class mates and thesis professor, I came to realize that my audience is the media itself! Posters are a form of mass communication, so my job is to get media attention and get people to notice. I am part of MASS MEDIA. It’ll be interesting to be part of media in a guerilla type of way – which I guess would be the activist method.

HOW TO GET TO THEM It is time to start getting clever in my poster design – I need to get the viewers to think they are part of something special, as though they are smart enough to really understand it and think about the message in a value manner. So the answer on how to get media attention is to be clever enough to get it, by utilizing locations, and themes and addressing concerns that will get noticed and talked about. I'm also thinking that it might be interesting to promote awareness through a positive message such as; "You're doing such a great job on doing you're part!" or "It's up to you! But if you do just thing one thing, you're totally awesome!"

WHAT SHOULD THEY TAKE AWAY They should come away with feeling that they have more knowledge about a global concern. They should have learned something, or at the very least, they should realize that it’s easy to do their part. These clever posters will leave the viewer feeling knowledgeable about what is going on in regards to global issues, and have the drive to do something about it.

SOME IDEAS TO GET MEDIA ATTENTION ONLINE I have found the following statistics regarding how journalists use the internet: 95% 92% 92% 89% 87% 75% 61% 59% 85% 55% 24%

'search' function read news email finding story ideas finding news sources reading blogs watch youtube social networks have LinkedIn have facebook twitter

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one poster a day 25

design think one every day. you have time to

about it

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I started designing a poster every day, or at least I attempted to design a poster everyday. It’s a way to get me to think about posters and process in which I design them. I designed without restrictions and obligations. I was free to just be inspired by whatever was on my mind.

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t e k r a M r i a l St. C n! u S & t a S n e p O w o N

1652 St. Clair A

ve. West

If you’re looking for a fun day out with the family, head on over to St. Clair Market. Now open Saturdays and Sundays until Nov 30th. Enjoy fresh local produce and meats, at a great price! Free Admission!

EIxcessivej

Beautyc not for the faint of heart

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ONCE A DAY I FALL INTO A PLACE WHERE I AM FREE (The continuation of the Daily Poster)

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Michael Sweet

Memorial Wall Art & Design Competition

Competition Launch:

Wed Nov 11 2009 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM 100 McCaul Street, Room 187 (Lambert Lounge) Light refreshments.

This OCAD Student competition (2nd Year and up) to create an inspired outdoor Art and/or Design installation in honour of Constable Police Officer Michael Sweet will be launched on November 11, 2009. The competition will occur over the late fall and early part of the New Year, 2010. The Memorial piece will be unveiled at a public ceremony in late Spring, 2010, to mark the 30th year since the tragic loss of Constable Sweet in the line of duty. Family, colleagues, dignitaries, OCAD and the greater community will be in attendance.

The deadline for preliminary proposals is

Fri Nov 27 2009 at 3:30 PM Students must register to enter the competition and can do so at the launch, and through e-mail at ahaldane@ocad.ca

today

is unique so is tomorrow

MO

VE

MB

NO AW VEM AR BER NE GR SS IS M MO EN TO OW Y NT 'S C P O ME RO AN UR H. M CE N'S OT BES RS CA E A T MO NC WA MUS R E MO E I RS RN TA N C !

ES VE S F HE MB FO A OR ER T .CO M

ER 29

A SMALL BEST BLURRY SERIES THE

IS YET TO COME

(The continuation of the Daily Poster)

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I started blogging about my process and daily poster designs on mydesignprocess.blogspot.com and these posters were a huge hit. I've already had a few requests to purchase some of these. This is something that I plan on considering in the near future through an Etsy store or something similar.

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FREE dom !!!!!!!! !!!!!!!! !thank !!!!!!! !YOU! !!!!! ! !!!!!!!! !!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

Dreamg a littlee

is fragilef

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THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I had a few posters that I was working on for other classes that fit perfectly into my theme of activism. I decided that this week I would focus on an environmental theme for my daily posters.

posters of the week THE WORLD DEPENDS ON TREES FIND OUT MORE AT GREENPLANET.CA

DID WE AGREE TO THIS?

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PLANET IN FOCUS International Environmental Film & Video Festival

October 22– 26, 2008 www.planetinfocus.com 55 Bloor Street West, Toronto – 416-531-4689

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THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY These are some of the daily posters I did using the Vandercook letterpress. In most cases I used wood and lead type. I also experimented with transferring ink from print outs using acetone markers.

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the breakdown of a poster

WHAT IS a poster REALLY? THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY This week was about exploring what a poster really is. A poster sends a message, it is seen by the masses and promotes something – in this case a message of change. It needs to be clever, thought-provoking and it needs to get noticed while not treating individuals as unintelligent. I'm thinking this could be a campaign. One that is interactive, unique, and makes people feel good about choices they make. By being positive it might make people a little bit more willing to make a small change if it's going to make a big impact.

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analysis of a poster DICTIONARY DEFINITION:

WHERE DO YOU SEE POSTERS?

— NOUN 1. A placard or bill posted or intended for posting in a public place, as for advertising 2. A person who posts bills, placards, etc.

• On Posts • Walls • Garbage cans • Subways • Or handed out

The word POST as a verb "to affix a paper, etc".

The term; To "post" as in a public space was first recorded in 1650.

WHAT COULD A POSTER BE? • An expression of communication • A way to get people to stop and think • Wall art • Warning posters – like emergency • Anything striking that could cause the public to think twice about something • Displaying information creates awareness • Posters are usually mass produced – usually trying to sell something • Tells you what to do / makes you think that it was your idea • Promotes change • Makes you think • Encourages • Makes a statement > Maybe this would be interpretive or staged, like a performance • Intellectual and/or clever message

WHAT WOULD A NON-POSTER POSTER BE? • Not in a conventional location • A message that is displayed right on the street, possibly a message about population while people walk on the poster • What if I handed out posters? Limited edition prints of important issues.

• They could be collectables!

• A message that isn't apparent right away • A poster that you interact with • A poster that seems to come to life by it's environment and setting. An idea could be a poster on a tree, and possibly displayed as a series throughout an area in a park, that when looked at together would display a single message

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Thoughts ALong the Way I have been thinking about unique places my posters could be displayed – something that is entirely different or not usually done, just like the Toronto Maple Leafs sidewalk advertising. They used actual graffiti! This made me realize that posters can really be on any surface, be any size, and made of the unusual materials, unlike paper. Using spray paint or other marking devices is a good way to display a message. A poster is just that – a displayed message.

Through further research I discovered that this type of street graffiti used for advertising is called water stenciling.

The image can just be sprayed off with a pressure washer, making them not permanent and therefore fugitive.

This form of communication could be portrayed as something negative. Critics of the maple leafs sidewalk advertising consider it a form of 'ad creep' – suggesting that advertising is creeping into areas of our lives that it doesn't belong. Would my posters be venturing in to this 'ad creep' world? In my opinion we are already bombarded with advertising everyday – seeing thousands of ads a day, there really isn't much defence in the form of 'ad creep' considering that advertising is constantly with us with the products we use and buy.

STREET art 40

banksy There is no way to mention street art without mentioning Bansky. Banksy's street art has been very inspirational to me.

His clever graffiti work has drawn attention world wide, while spreading messages of global controversy and issues that we

should all be aware of – he makes a statement and expresses personal judgements through his graffiti – a handmade craft.

He posts more than just messages, he posts works of art with meaning and a purpose.

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IDEAS THAT MAKE YOU DO SOMETHING

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY This week I had a bit of an epiphany. I have been thinking a lot about how to make a poster speak to the viewer on a level that is intriguing and engaging... Here is my answer (I hope). I need to make the posters interactive!

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the interactive poster So now how do I make a poster interactive? Well, for starters, the poster needs to be interesting – get people to see it!

Put it in a spot that is easily seen, unusual and has to do with what the message is about. If it is a message about massive deforestation... put the poster on a tree, or turn a post into a tree... see where I'm going with this? Get the viewer to feel the poster, not just see it – to start really interacting with it. To get people who do not have the gift of synesthesia, to see and feel something more when they look at the poster. I want to really make a point to place the message in a spot that directly has something to do with the message.

Couple initial ideas: • "Out of order" on the garbage cans • Stencilled footprints on the sidewalk, with human footprint within them, but they would be made of mud so as the person walks the foot prints disappear... with a message on the last foot print about how we will disappear along with the rest of the species.

Absolutely incredible interactive design!

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a non traditional poster THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I thought further on the idea that a poster does not need to be a traditional piece of paper that has been printed out and hung on a wall. I want to make a statement with my work and so I explored the idea of activism through the use of alternative methods of producing a message. I designed this poster, with the arms around the tree as an message against deforestation.

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THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY This week I explored methods of advertising, as a means of understanding how I could distribute and display my posters – mainly in a guerilla marketing sort of way... in an activist approach. As I researched these, I was inspired with just how interactive some of the advertisements were.

GUERRILLA ACTIVISM WHAT IS GUERILLA MARKETING/ACTIVISM? • Underground marketing campaign • These did not exist before the 70's • Before the 70's, advertisers seemed to educate their audience rather than entertain or engage with them • Advertiser started to notice that these types of ads were becoming less effective • They became not educational or preachy • The viewer felt that they were in on some sort of secret • In the 80's there were 'guerilla girls' at clubs that would casually talk to other men, get them to order them a drink, and ask for a specific "new" drink (as a marketing gimmick), This was some of the first uses of guerilla marketing.

• It was about making it personal and truth worthy, like a friend.

"One of the main advantages of guerrilla marketing is that it’s unexpected. It catches us off guard and causes an emotional response: laughter, shock or sadness are great sellers. It’s easy to see why marketers would rather you didn’t know just how they’re using guerrilla marketing to their advantage. If you know their secrets, you may just stop responding." (10 Different Types of Guerrilla Marketing: Part Six in an Eight-Part WebUrbanist GMarketing Series)

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TYPES OF GUERRILLA MARKETING (10 Different Types of Guerrilla Marketing \\weburbanist.com)

Ambient marketing allows a business to create brand recognition without necessarily pushing their products... vans are covered in real, growing grass and can often be seen around the city making deliveries and drawing stares. Because they serve a real purpose (delivering smoothies), the vans don’t look like advertisements.

Presence marketing is along the same lines as ambient marketing. It’s about making the business name recognizable and familiar and always there... This can be achieved through product placements in movies and TV shows, stalls at local festivals and markets, regular Twitter updates, or whatever else makes that product name visible daily.

Grassroots marketing is gaining popularity... A successful grassroots campaign is all about building relationships and emphasizing the personal connection, not about broadcasting your message and hoping potential customers are listening.

Wild postings may seem old-fashioned, but they are still wildly popular with indie bands and products that want to portray that indie image... a wall plastered with multiple copies of a poster...

Tissue-pack advertising was made popular in Japan, but today it’s spreading to infiltrate the rest of the world... Japanese businesses began to hand out pocket packs of tissues with ads on them.

This simple but ingenious marketing method works because, well, who would turn down free stuff?

Undercover marketing , or buzz marketing , is said to be one of the more devious ways of marketing to the masses... like the “buy me a drink” girls of the 80's Astroturfing is widely considered to be the slimiest of all guerrilla marketing practices. It involves creating an artificial buzz about a product or company.

Alternative marketing may be best defined as publicity that looks like it is completely removed from the company itself... i.e. Paris Hilton's phone was cracked and sales jumped over night experiential marketing aims to give you an experience rather than send you a oneway message. Experiential marketing lets you interact with the product and associate your immediate emotional responses with that brand.

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make 'em do something THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I definitely had a breakthrough this week. After researching Guerilla Activism, I was further inspired by the interaction that people can have with design.

It all started with an exploration into how I could make a poster interactive. I have already been inspired by posters that get your hands dirty, that make you plant, and interact, so I decided to look into this sort of interaction. I am looking for that wow factor that would make a positive statement and relate directly to the issues I will comment on.

These 3 posters create interaction through the use of the materials and the sound they create. Designed by DM9DDB. 50

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY Seeing this led me into a place in my research that would solve this dilemma of how make a poster meaningful and interactive. It was the first stepping stone in a body of research, experimentation, and begging of free samples.

Designed by the Sagmeister team, it uses the natural yellowing of a newspaper to create this effect. Brilliant! This is was got me looking into how this actually happens, and can I do something like this – a message that is there one minute and gone the next?

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major finding

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THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I definitely had a breakthrough during the last week of the first semester. It all started with a look into how I could make a poster interactive. One method was having parts of the poster vanish over time... or reveal a message as it was being used in some way (recall the dirty hands poster). Either way, the idea was to have the poster change over time. I found out that colour actually has a fading rate!

COLOURS THAT CHANGE

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Fugitive colour Fugitive Colour is the science behind the way colours fade over time. They literally turn different colours when being exposed to UV rays from the sun. This lead to a think tank asking; what changes over time?

• Newspaper yellow over time (like the Sagmeister billboard) • Watercolours, pastels, coloured pencils are susceptible to "damage" • In photography, cyan fades the quickest • Dyed textiles This was all exciting to discover, however, it take months for any of these changes to really take place, and that is not time I have. I needed a way I could control this and make it faster.

A DISCOVERY I found a patent for a company that sells spray paint that is purposely fugitive. It fades within 30-35 days when exposed to sunlight! It comes in all sorts of colours; red, blue, pink, and orange. With more research into this paint, I realized that this was fugitive marking paint – the spray paint that construction workers sometimes use to mark the streets, the grass, or trees. It fades quickly and is nice and bright to begin with.

I will need to do further tests on how it reacts with paper before I take it too far.

Further throughout my think tank I thought of possibly using other materials that change over time, not necessarily fade...

• (I know it's gross), but blood turns from bright red to a dark brown over time (and in not much time at all) • Organic food changes as it rots. (again gross) • Chalk disappears the more it is used (i.e. walked on) • Plants grow • Metal gets rusty • Invisible markers (like from Crayola) • Glow in the dark paint (you can only see the message at night/in the dark)

other discoveries: I found a paint that when it is exposed to heat it will change from black to white or blue to white. (Alsa Corp.) The only thing about this paint is that I believe that it needs to be either on metal or some sort of plastic. I will be doing further research into this. There is also the idea of using paint that changes colour depending on the angle you look at it, which could create some interesting effects and messages (from Dupicolor). These methods of painting are commonly seen on vehicles.

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thermochromic THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY Once I discovered that colours can actually change – that such a thing existed! – I dug deeper and found Thermochromic ink! This is ink that changes at a set temperature. It comes in a variety of colours and changing temperatures. Thinking back to the 90's, this is what hyper colour t-shirts must have been made of. Commonly it is now seen on beer bottles, batteries (to detect charge), and merchandise. I contacted Siltech Limited from the UK and obtained my first free sample that changes at 60ºC. There wasn't very much in the sample, but it gave me an idea of what I was dealing with – If it was even going to work.

I continued searching for an affordable option. Luckily EBAY is great for things like this. I came across Chromatic Fever, which is a thermochromatic powder that changes at 30ºC.

I decided that 30ºC was a better temperature to use considering that body temperature is just slightly warmer, and that ideally when someone was to touch the print the ink would become transparent – making the print very interactive. It is also our hand (as in the human species) that has caused so many of the planet issues that I will be commenting on in my posters. I also think that 30ºC is a good temperature to work with because I believe that it will change easier in the environment, especially on a warm summer day, when the days are warm (possibly over 30ºC) and cool at night – a sun filled window or warmed concrete wall should be enough to heat the poster. 60ºC seemed a bit high for what I'm intending to do.

This is my first test of the thermochromic ink on paper. It becomes transparent at 60ºC. 56

CHROMATIC FEVER: thermochromic ink from EBAY

I searched far and wide for thermochromic ink that could be run threw a letterpress machine or screen printed. I found a company in the UK called Siltech, but they were too expensive and would only send small samples. I found a thermochromic powder that can be mixed with any

transparent base! I communicated with the representatives from both Chromatic Fever and also from Siltech to answer any of my printing questions. They assured me that I would be able to screen print with the ink as long as it was mixed correctly.

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THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY Every week along this thesis journey I learned more about environmental issues that are happening – all of which have to do with the incredible amount we consume and dispose of.

Although I had many resources for my research which included newspaper articles, blogs and environmental organization websites, my primary sources for learning about environmental issues included: The Earth Policy Organization (website) World Wildlife Association (website) The Story of Stuff (book and website) The Nature of Things (website) Greenpeace (website) Documentary films that provided insight included: Food Inc. (2008, Robert Kenner) The Nature of Things: To Bee or Not to Bee (2010, Mark Johnston) The Nature of Things: Arctic Meltdown – A Changing World (2009, Kristina Von Hlatky) Addicted to Plastic (2010, Ian Connacher) The Age of Stupid (2009, Franny Armstrong)

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search for info 59

FORESTS

April 04, 2006 Elizabeth Mygatt

World’s Forests Continue to Shrink A healthy planet needs healthy forests. Thriving forests regulate the water cycle and stabilize soils. Forests also help moderate climate by soaking up and storing carbon dioxide. In addition to these ecosystem services, forests provide habitat for diverse flora and fauna, offer cultural, spiritual, and recreational opportunities, and provide a variety of food, medicines, and wood.

Nearly 4 billion hectares of forest cover the earth’s surface, roughly 30 percent of its total land area. Though extensive, the world’s forests have shrunk by some 40 percent since agriculture began 11,000 years ago. Three quarters of this loss occurred in the last two centuries as land was cleared to make way for farms and to meet demand for wood.

Over the last five years, the world suffered a net loss of some 37 million hectares (91 million acres) of forest, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. This number reflects the felling of 64.4 million hectares of trees and the planting or natural regeneration of 27.8 million hectares of new forest. Each year the world loses some 7.3 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Panama. Due to extensive reforestation, this net forest shrinkage has slowed slightly from the 8.9 million hectares lost annually in the 1990s.

While this is encouraging, it obscures the sobering fact that gross deforestation has not declined significantly since 2000.

World forest cover, per continent, 1990 – 2005

TOTAL FOREST COVER, MEASURED IN MILLION(S) OF HECTARES

AFRICA ASIA EUROPE OCEANIA SOUTH AMERICA NORTH & CENTRAL AMERICA TOTAL WORLD

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1990 699 574 989 213 891 711

2000 656 567 998 208 853 708

4077

3989

2005 635 572 1001 206 832 706

3952

Forest degradation is also cause for concern. Of the world’s 1.4 billion hectares of remaining primary forest—natural forest that shows no sign of human impact—6 million hectares are lost or degraded each year. We are losing not only forest area but some of our best forest stands.

Africa lost 64 million hectares of forest between 1990 and 2005, the greatest decline of any continent. Fuelwood gathering drives much of this forest depletion. Timber exports also play a role, with 80 percent of the Congo Basin’s timber production being exported, mainly to China and the European Union.

South America has sustained the second greatest forest loss since 1990—59 million hectares—and deforestation has accelerated somewhat over the last five years, from 3.8 million hectares a year in the 1990s to 4.3 million hectares annually since 2000. This recent acceleration reflects Brazil’s reported net loss of 16 million hectares between 2000 and 2005—three fourths of the regional total. If Amazonian deforestation continues unchecked, the world’s largest rainforest will be cut down to 60 percent of its current size by 2050.

Asia lost a net 8 million hectares in the 1990s but gained a net 5 million hectares between 2000 and 2005. This reversal is due to a massive reforestation effort in China, which reported planting 20 million hectares of trees between 2000 and 2005, with more than a third of this area in plantations. This growth rate, more than double that of the previous decade, is largely a result of China’s logging ban, a policy enacted after widespread deforestation in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River valley left the countryside vulnerable to severe floods in 1998.

Unfortunately, China’s tree cutting ban has simply driven deforestation elsewhere, as China continues to be the world’s largest wood importer and processor. South and Southeast Asia lost over 14 million hectares of forest in the last five years. Indonesia’s natural forests, losing 2 million hectares a year, have suffered some of the heaviest cutting and could disappear within 10 years as they give way to timber and oilpalm plantations.

Apart from China, most of the gains in forest area are in industrial countries, while developing countries bear the brunt of deforestation. Forest area in North America has been stable at roughly 675 million hectares for the past 15 years, with deforestation in Mexico largely offsetting new plantings and reforestation in the United States. Central America has lost over 5 million hectares since 1990, and Europe has gained 12 million hectares. Industrial countries may be leading the way in conserving their own forests, but their demand for wood drives much of the deforestation elsewhere on the globe.

Forests are cleared to grow food and energy crops, graze cattle, and meet demand for wood products. The global wood harvest totaled 3.4 billion cubic meters in 2004, up from 2.3 billion cubic meters in 1961. Fifty-two percent of this is used as fuel, though this varies regionally. (See Data.) Fuelwood accounts for 89 percent of Africa’s wood harvest, where it is often the only accessible and affordable source of energy for heating and cooking, but only 17 percent in North and Central America, where other energy sources are more readily available.

Much of the world’s wood is harvested illegally. Illegal logging accounts for more than half of timber production in Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Cameroon. In addition to devastating forest ecosystems, illegal logging robs forest dwellers of their livelihoods, fuels social turmoil, and deprives timber-producing countries of up to $15 billion of revenue each year.

Forest plantations—planted stands that often consist of singleage monocultures—can alleviate logging pressure on natural forest areas. Worldwide, plantations account for less than 5 percent of global forest area but produce roughly 35 percent of the annual wood harvest. Growth in plantation area has accelerated, increasing by 2.8 million hectares a year since 2000. By 2020, plantation production is projected to meet 44 percent of global wood demand. Close to half of the world’s productive plantations are located in China, Russia, and the United States. Still, plantations cannot offer the same biodiversity and vitality that a natural forest can. Plantation development is most advantageous on lands that are already clear

of trees, as a way to offset future deforestation and decrease pressure on natural stands to supply forest products.

Reducing consumption of virgin wood products is integral to protecting the world’s remaining natural forests. This entails curbing the world’s appetite for timber, paper, and other wood products and decreasing wood burning for fuel by developing energy alternatives. In addition, stepping up recycling efforts will temper the need to fell more trees.

Certification emerged more than a decade ago as a way to identify forests that are managed and logged responsibly.

Sustainable forestry depends on shifting from clearcutting to selective cutting of mature trees while maintaining the social and economic benefits enjoyed by forest inhabitants and other stakeholders. As of early 2006, the Forest Stewardship Council, the world’s most rigorous accreditation organization, had certified some 68 million hectares in 66 countries as sustainable. Certification has expanded considerably in the past five years, although certified wood products still constitute only a small fraction of the global market.

For consumers, demanding certified wood products spur responsible forest management and help curb illegal logging. If governments, as policymakers and forest product consumers themselves, were to take a stronger leadership role in forest management oversight and enforcement, this would also encourage sustainable forestry practices. Protecting the world’s remaining natural forests, cultivating new forest stands, and reducing consumption of forest resources are all critical steps toward preserving the indispensable services that forests provide. It is in our best interest to keep forests flourishing.

Copyright © 2006 Earth Policy Institute Source for World Forest Cover chart: Compiled by Earth Policy Institute from U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 (Rome: 2006), www.fao. org/forestry/site/32038/en.

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FORESTS This is a scanned excerpt from the book; The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.

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FORESTS This is a scanned excerpt from the book; The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.

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WATER RESOURCES

July 26, 2006 Elizabeth Mygatt

World's Water Resources Face Mounting Pressure Global freshwater use tripled during the second half of the twentieth century as population more than doubled and as technological advances let farmers and other water users pump groundwater from greater depths and harness river water with more and larger dams. As global demand soars, pressures on the world’s water resources are straining aquatic systems worldwide. Rivers are running dry, lakes are disappearing, and water tables are dropping. Nearly 70 percent of global water withdrawals from rivers, lakes, and aquifers are used for irrigation, while industry and households account for 20 and 10 percent, respectively.

Pressure on water resources is particularly acute in arid regions that support agricultural production or large populations—regions where water use is high relative to water availability. The Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, South Asia, China, Australia, the western United States, and Mexico are especially prone to water shortages.

Much of the growth in water use over the past half-century World Irrigated Area (per 1000 people) 1950 – 2003 50 48

scarce. Forty years ago, irrigated area was expanding at an annual rate of 2.1 percent, but the last 5 years of data reflect slower growth of only 0.4 percent. Since governments are more likely to report gains from new projects than losses as wells go dry, as rivers dry up, or as irrigation water is diverted to cities, these estimates may be high and irrigated area may have already peaked.

Meanwhile, the extent of irrigated area per person reached a high of 47 hectares per thousand people in 1978 and has been shrinking steadily since 1992. In 2003, per capita irrigated area dropped below 44 hectares per thousand people, the lowest level of the past four decades. With population growth outpacing growth in irrigated area, this figure is unlikely to rebound substantially.

As demand for water continues to grow in order to satisfy rising agricultural, industrial and residential needs, aquatic ecosystems struggle to respond. Countless communities depend heavily on rivers, both for direct water use and as a source of energy. But as upstream populations increase their demands, downstream communities have less water available to them. In some cases, rivers become so overexploited that they cease to exist altogether.

46 44 HECTARES

42 40 38 36 34 32 30 1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

YEAR

is from a vast increase in irrigation, which is used to produce 60 percent of the world’s grain. Globally, irrigated area nearly tripled between 1950 and 2003, growing from 94 million to 277 million hectares. This growth, however, is tapering off as the water needed to expand irrigation becomes increasingly

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The Amu Darya in Central Asia and the Colorado in the southwestern United States are among the world’s rivers that run dry for at least part of the year. Water from the Amu Darya, once the largest tributary of the Aral Sea, is diverted to irrigate the cotton fields of Central Asia. The Colorado’s flow is depleted by southwestern farmers and thirsty cities alike, with over one fourth of these withdrawals—3.8 trillion liters—going to California alone. At times during 18 of the last 26 years of the twentieth century, China’s Yellow River failed to make it to the sea. In recent years, however, better management and greater reservoir capacity have facilitated yearround flow. Other rivers, including the Ganges, the Indus, and the Nile, are sometimes little more than a trickle by the time they reach the sea.

As rivers run dry, the lakes that rely on them suffer as well.

Lake shorelines are receding and water levels are dropping due to dramatic reductions in inflow from rivers and streams, declining recharge from overstressed aquifers, and increasing water withdrawals from lakes. For example, the Dead Sea has dropped by 25 meters (82 feet) in the past 40 years, and Mono Lake in California has fallen by 11 meters since 1941, the year Los Angeles first began to draw water from its tributaries.

Lake Chad, once spanning 23,000 square kilometers in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad, now covers just 900 square kilometers and exists entirely within Chad’s borders, rendering earlier maps obsolete. China’s Hebei Province has lost 969 of its 1,052 lakes. In Central Asia, historic ports built on the shores of the Aral Sea are now up to 150 kilometers from the water’s edge. Water levels dropped so low that the sea split in two in the late 1980s. While the South Aral Sea, intermittently fed by the weakened Amu Darya, will likely never recover, recent efforts to revitalize the North Aral Sea have raised water level from 30 to 38 meters, close to the 42-meter level of viability.

Falling water tables are less obvious indicators of global water shortages than disappearing lakes and dry riverbeds. Yet groundwater reserves are becoming increasingly depleted, due in large part to the rise in irrigated area and the growing use of water for industrial purposes. Fossil aquifers, which supply irrigation water to some of the world’s major grain producers, are of particular concern because they cannot be replenished.

more difficult.

While groundwater is integral to today’s agriculture, it is also a valuable resource in urban environments. Some of the world’s largest cities, including Mexico City, Calcutta, and Shanghai, rely heavily on local groundwater. Thirty percent of China’s urban water supply is fed from groundwater. Worldwide, it is estimated that roughly 2 billion people—in both rural and urban environments—rely on groundwater for daily water consumption.

With the projected addition of 2.6 billion people to the global population by 2050, most of them in countries where water tables are already falling and wells are going dry, water shortages will likely become more commonplace and more severe.

Absent a global effort to quickly slow population growth and to use water more efficiently, water shortages may translate into food shortages in more and more countries.

Copyright © 2006 Earth Policy Institute http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/indicators/C57/

Aquifers are being overexploited in major food-producing regions, including the North China Plain, a region that yields half of China’s wheat and one third of its corn; Punjab, Haryana, and other highly productive agricultural states in northern India; and the southern Great Plains of the United States, a major grain-producing region. Together, China, India, and the United States produce nearly half the world’s grain, and these three countries plus Pakistan collectively account for over three fourths of the world’s reported groundwater extraction for agricultural purposes. Falling water tables in these countries may make expanding world food production 67

WATER RESOURCES

Major Rivers Running Dry

Amu Darya

Indus

The Amu Darya is one of the two rivers that feed into the Aral Sea. Soaring demands on this river, largely to support irrigated agriculture, sometimes drain it dry before it reaches the sea.

This, in combination with a reduced flow of the Syr Darya—the other river feeding into the sea—helps explain why the Aral Sea has shrunk by roughly 75 percent over the last 40 years and has split into two sections.

The Indus, originating in the Himalayas and flowing southwest to the Arabian Sea, feeds Pakistan’s irrigated agriculture. It now barely reaches the ocean during much of the year. Pakistan, with a population of 161 million projected to reach 305 million by 2050, is facing trouble.

Colorado

In Egypt, a country where it rarely ever rains, the Nile is vitally important. Already drastically reduced by the time it reaches the Mediterranean, it may go dry further upstream in the decades ahead if the populations of Sudan and Ethiopia double by 2050, as projected.

All the water in the Colorado, the major river in southwestern United States, is allocated. As a result, this river, fed by the rainfall and snowmelt from the mountains of Colorado, now rarely makes it to the Gulf of California.

Fen This river, which flows from the northern part of China’s Shanxi province and empties into the Yellow river at the province’s southern end, has essentially disappeared as water withdrawals upstream in the watershed have lowered the water table, drying up springs that once fed the river.

Ganges The Gangetic basin is home to some 450 million people.

Flowing through Bangladesh en route to the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges has little water left when it reaches the bay.

Nile

Yellow The cradle of Chinese civilization, the Yellow River has frequently run dry before reaching the sea over the past three decades. In 1997, the lower reaches saw no flow for 226 days.

While better management practices have enabled the river to reach its mouth year round during the past several years, flow levels are still extremely low during the dry season.

From “Stabilizing Water Tables,” Chapter 6 in Lester R. Brown, Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), pp. 106-107. Updated

by Elizabeth Mygatt, Earth Policy Institute, July 2006.

Disappearing Lakes & Seas Aral Sea (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan)

Lake Chapala (Mexico)

Excessive diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, largely for irrigation, has shrunk the 5 million year old lake to about 25 percent of its 1960s size of 66,000 square kilometers. It now holds less than one fifth of its previous volume and has split into two sections. The larger, South Aral Sea is unlikely to be restored, but the construction of a dam between the two sections, slated to be completed in September 2006, has already led to a rise in water level in the smaller North Aral Sea.

Mexico's largest lake is the main water source for Guadalajara's 5 million people. Its long-term decline began in the late 1970s corresponding with expanded agricultural development in the Río Lerma watershed. Since then, the lake has lost more than 80 percent of its water. Between 1986 and 2001, Chapala shrank from 1,048 to 812 square kilometers and its level dropped by up to 4 meters.

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Lake Baikal (Russia) Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake, contains nearly one fifth of the world's unfrozen freshwater. Over the past century the amount of soil flushed into the lake increased by two and half times due to regional agricultural and industrial development.

Lake Chad (Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon)

Lake Chad has shrunk from 23,000 to 900 square kilometers over the past 40 years, a result of increased irrigation and decades of depressed rainfall. The Lake, which once covered part of Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, is now contained entirely within Chad's borders.

Dal Lake (India) Lake Dal has shrunk from 75 square kilometers in 1200 AD to 25 square kilometers in the 1980s, to smaller than 12 square kilometers today. Over the last decade the lake has dropped 2.4 meters in height. All the untreated sewage of Srinagar city and some 1,400 houseboats is deposited directly into the lake.

Other lakes in the Kashmir Valley are facing similar problems.

Dead Sea (Jordan, Israel, and Palestine) At 417 meters below sea level, the Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth, and is falling by up to 1 meter per year. The Sea has shrunk in length since the early 1900s, from over 75 to 55 kilometers long, and has split in two, with the southern basin turned into evaporation ponds for potash extraction.

The salty lake could disappear entirely by 2050, along with the 90 species of birds, 25 species of reptiles and amphibians, 24 species of mammals, and 400 plant species that live on its shores.

Dojran Lake (Macedonia and Greece) More than 50 islands have appeared in the middle of the lake as overuse has dropped the water level by up to 3.48 meters below the minimal water level established in a 1956 bilateral agreement between Greece and Macedonia. Now with an average depth of 1.5 meters, the lake is turning into a swamp to the detriment of local plants and animals, especially fish.

Sea of Galilee / Lake Tiberias (Israel) The Sea of Galilee is Israel's largest freshwater lake, with a total area of 170 square kilometers and a maximum depth of

approximately 43 meters. At 209 meters below sea level, it is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and is expected to drop even lower as the lake shrinks and becomes saltier due to excessive water withdrawals, drought, and evaporation.

Lake Manchar (Pakistan) Diversion of the Indus River, largely for irrigation schemes, has deprived Manchar, Pakistan's largest lake, of fresh water.

Salt content has increased dramatically in recent years and the polluted water fosters diseases previously absent from the region. The lake had been a source of fish for at least 1,000 years, but due to its deterioration some 60,000 fishers have left the area.

Lake Nakuru (Kenya) The lake has shrunk in area since the 1970s from 48 to less than 37 square kilometers today. Nearby forests are being cleared for farmland to feed a fast growing population, causing soils to erode and wash into the lake. Failed urban sewage systems and unregulated industrial effluent have polluted the lake.

Owens Lake (United States, California) This perennial lake in southeastern California held water continuously for at least 800,000 years, spanning 518 square kilometers at its peak, but since the mid-1920s, after a decade of diverting water from the Owens River to Los Angeles, the lake has been completely drained. The dry lake bed, which contains carcinogens including nickel, cadmium, and arsenic, became the single largest source of particulate matter pollution in the United States, elevating air pollution in surrounding areas to up to 25 times the acceptable level under national clean air standards. Since 1998, Los Angeles has tried to abate these toxic dust storms by shallowly flooding a portion of the lake, reclaiming saline soils, and cultivating fields of salt tolerant grass.

Tonle Sap (Cambodia) Tonle Sap performs the important function of holding excess water during flood season, yet siltation from eroding farmland and deforested areas has reduced the lake's capacity and has destroyed aquatic habitat.

Copyright Š 2006 Earth Policy Institute http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/publications/C39/ 69

CARBON EMISSIONS April 09, 2008 Frances C. Moore

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Accelerating Rapidly Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2006, 20 percent above the level in 2000. Emissions grew 3.1 percent a year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the rate of growth during the 1990s. Carbon dioxide emissions have been growing steadily for 200 years, since fossil fuel burning began on a large scale at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But the growth in emissions is now accelerating despite unambiguous evidence that carbon dioxide is warming the planet and disrupting ecosystems around the globe.

account for more than a third. The United States has been the world’s largest emitter for over a century, releasing 1.66 GtC in 2006, or 19.8 percent of global emissions. It is now closely followed by China, where growth in emissions has been driven by a rapid increase in coal consumption—China is currently opening an average of two coal-fired power plants a week.

Emissions in China have more than doubled since 1990, reaching 1.48 GtC in 2006, or 17.7 percent of the world total.

Analysts expect that China will overtake the United States to become the world’s largest emitter before 2009.

THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY According the an article publish in June of 2007, Study's show that China already has taken the number spot as the planet's largest emitter. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews

In 2000, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) laid out projections of how greenhouse gas emissions were likely to evolve during the twenty-first century due to economic, demographic, and technological changes. The highend scenario combined rapid economic growth and globalization with intensive fossil fuel use and was used as the IPCC’s upper limit for estimates of future climate change in its recent 2007 report. Yet this upper-limit projection predicted annual emissions growth of only 2.3 percent between 2000 and 2010—far less than the 3.1 percent annual increase observed so far this century. With CO2 emissions currently exceeding the worst-case scenario, we can expect that temperature and sea level rise will likely do the same.

Five countries are responsible for over half of fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions, and the United States and China alone 70

The other countries in the top five are Russia, India, and Japan, respectively accounting for 5.2, 4.7, and 4.1 percent of global CO2 emissions. Of these, India has had the fastest growth in emissions, which have tripled since 1981. The increase in emissions from India and China reflects the rapid industrialization and economic growth currently happening throughout Asia. Since 2000, carbon dioxide emissions in Asia have grown five times faster than emissions in the rest of the world. The region, which produced less then 10 percent of global emissions in 1970, now accounts for almost a third of the world total.

These national and regional numbers mask huge differences in per capita CO2 emissions. After the tiny nations of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Singapore, the United States has the largest per capita emissions in the world. (See data.) At 5.5 tons of carbon, per person U.S. emissions are almost five times greater than those in China, and almost 200 times greater than those in the poorest countries in the world.

The United Nations calculates that an average air-conditioner in Florida is responsible for more CO2 every year than a person in Cambodia is in a lifetime, and that a dishwashing machine in Europe annually emits as much as three Ethiopians.

In general, richer countries have higher per capita emissions, but important examples show that emissions do not have to be correlated with standard of living. California, where the average income is well above the U.S. mean, still has per capita emissions just over half the national average. Many countries in Europe also have per capita emissions less than half those in the United States and yet still have a comparable standard of living.

Fossil fuel burning is not the only source of carbon dioxide emissions. Currently, roughly 2 gigatons of carbon are released every year as forests are logged for timber or burned to provide agricultural land or pasture. Deforestation is most severe in Indonesia and Brazil, countries with some of the largest remaining stands of tropical rainforest. (See data.) Together, these two countries account for more than half of emissions from land-use change.

Carbon dioxide from both fossil fuel burning and deforestation is accumulating in the atmosphere. Ice core records indicate that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any point in the last 650,000 years. In 2007, the atmospheric CO2 concentration was 384 parts per million (ppm), up from 280 ppm at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Between 2000 and 2007, atmospheric CO2 concentration grew by an average of 2 ppm per year, the fastest seven-year increase since continuous monitoring began in 1959. (See figure.)

Only about half of the CO2 released into the atmosphere every year actually remains there, as at least 45 percent is rapidly removed by carbon sinks such as plants and the ocean.

As carbon dioxide emissions grow and the planet warms, however, studies suggest that these sinks will begin to saturate and will be unable to continue taking up the same share of emissions. Carbon dioxide is less soluble in a warmer ocean, for example, and warmer soils tend to hold less carbon, so as temperatures rise, a smaller proportion of CO2 emissions will be taken up by land and ocean sinks. A detailed examination of the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration published in late 2007 suggested that a slowdown in sink uptake may already be occurring—much earlier than scientists had

anticipated.

Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, in combination with other greenhouse gases, have already raised global average temperature by 0.8 degrees Celsius, with more than two thirds of that increase coming since 1980. This warming is already affecting natural systems around the world: climate scientists have documented trends of more heat waves, longer and more-intense droughts, higher sea level, more-frequent heavy rain events, and stronger hurricanes. Increasing CO2 levels are also acidifying the ocean, making survival more difficult for organisms such as coral that use calcium carbonate to form their structure. The pH (a measure of acidity where a lower value indicates more acidic conditions) of the surface ocean has already decreased by 0.1 points and could drop a further 0.3–0.4 points by 2100 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced. This would threaten the existence of organisms that play key roles in the marine ecosystem.

The IPCC projects that without policy measures to address global warming, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning could more than double between 2000 and 2030, a trajectory that would make it almost impossible to avoid a temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures. Increasing evidence suggests that even a warming of less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures would constitute “dangerous” climate change, something nations have already committed to avoid under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It is clear that to prevent the most serious and irreversible effects of climate change, the world must act swiftly to substantially cut emissions. Energy efficiency measures and existing technologies such as wind power and plug-in hybrid electric cars, combined with programs to protect and restore the world’s forests could cut net global carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020, a goal outlined in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester R. Brown. Putting this plan into action would halt and reverse the longstanding trend of growing carbon dioxide emissions.

Copyright © 2008 Earth Policy Institute 71

FISH June 22, 2005 Janet Larsen

Wild Fish Catch Hits Limits:

Oceanic Decline Offset by Increased Fish Farming After decades of growth, the reported global wild fish catch peaked in 2000 at 96 million tons and fell to 90 million tons in 2003, the last year for which worldwide data are available.* The catch per person dropped from an average of 17 kilograms in the late 1980s to 14 kilograms in 2003—the lowest figure since 1965. (See data.)

As fishing fleets expanded through the late 1980s and as fishfinding and harvesting technologies became more efficient, the world’s fishers have systematically gone after their catch at greater depths and in more remote waters. Over the past 50 years, the number of large predatory fish in the oceans has dropped by a startling 90 percent. Catches of many popular food fish such as cod, tuna, flounder, and hake have been cut in half despite a tripling in fishing effort. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the 4 million vessels scouring the world’s waters are at or exceeding the sustainable yields of three quarters of all oceanic fisheries.

The 10 most-fished species constitute 30 percent of the world’s catch. Seven of these have reached their limits and are classified as fully exploited or overexploited throughout their entire ranges, meaning that we cannot expect to increase their harvests. Included in this group are two types of Peruvian anchoveta, Alaska pollock, Japanese anchovy, blue whiting in the northeast Atlantic, capelin in the North Atlantic, and 72

Atlantic herring. The other three species—chub mackerel, skipjack tuna, and largehead hairtail—are overfished in parts of their ranges.

Interestingly, several of these species became fishing targets only after the stocks of more desirable fish were overharvested. After the collapse of the 500-year-old Canadian cod fishery in the early 1990s, blue whiting catches increased. In the northwest Pacific, the overfishing of Alaska pollock and Japanese sardine led fishers to focus on Japanese anchovy, largehead hairtail, and squid. Some scientists warn that continuing to “fish down the food web” will lead to harvests almost exclusively of bait fish and jellyfish.

The tendency to catch larger and older fish first, leaving those small enough to escape from nets to breed, has over time reduced the average size of those caught. The effect on large predators is striking: for example, in the 1950s an average blue shark weighed 52 kilograms; in the 1990s, the average was 22 kilograms. In addition, fish that breed late in life are sometimes pulled out of the water before they can reproduce. When fish respond to overharvesting by reproducing at earlier ages, recent research shows that their populations are still hit hard because, for some species, the offspring of older fish have a better chance of survival than the offspring of younger fish.

Although fishers generally target specific kinds of fish, they often bring in more than just the intended catch. Some 8 percent of global landings are discarded, returned to the sea dead or dying. Shrimp trawlers, which drag enormous nets over the seafloor and destroy delicate ecosystems, are the most indiscriminate; some 62 percent of their catch is thrown back in the water. And these tallies underestimate the true losses as they only include reported bycatch and do not consider any of the marine mammals or birds that become entangled in fishing gear. Longliners with thousands of hooks on central fishing lines of up to 100 kilometers (60 miles) are estimated to kill some 4.4 million sharks, sea turtles, seabirds, billfish, and marine mammals in the Pacific each year.

Overall, 1 billion people around the world rely on fish as their primary source of protein. While annual fish consumption per person in the industrial countries (at 29 kilograms) is more than twice that of developing countries, three quarters of the fish caught in the wild (by weight) come from developing countries, which also supply 9 out of 10 farmed fish.

Thus fish are one of the most widely traded commodities.

Seventy-five percent of the total marine harvest is sold on international markets each year, accounting for some $58 billion in exports in 2002. Japan, the United States, and the European Union are the top importers, bringing in fish caught in foreign seas or farmed in other regions and also sending industrial fishing fleets to empty the waters near developing countries. Off the west coast of Africa, for instance, large European and Japanese ships have displaced smaller boats, leaving little of the catch to feed local people.

The irony is that governments subsidize the destruction of oceanic resources to the tune of $15-30 billion each year. In 2001, subsidies paid to the fishing industry in Japan reached $2.5 billion, equal in value to a quarter of the catch. U.S. fishing subsidies totaled $1.2 billion, exceeding the worth of 30 percent of the U.S. catch. Removing these subsidies could go a long way toward relieving pressure on fish stocks.

While fish stocks historically have been managed on a species-by-species basis, scientists now recognize the need for management of whole ecosystems. This includes setting aside marine reserves where fishing is prohibited altogether.

There is no guarantee that a collapsed fishery can recover, but studies of protected areas around the world have shown that some exploited fish populations rebound faster and that individual fish grow larger in and around marine reserves than in unprotected areas. A global network of marine reserves protecting up to 30 percent of the world’s oceans would cost around $13 billion—far less than the subsidies that currently promote overfishing. Such a network would also create some 1 million new jobs and bolster the number of fish that can be caught in nearby waters.

Creating sustainable fisheries also depends on strict fishing quotas and better enforcement to quash illegal fishing.

Restricting the most damaging and indiscriminate types of fishing gear and adopting new bycatch-reducing technologies can stop the killing of incidental catch. For example, by modifying the shape of their hooks and switching to a different type of bait, fishers in the Western North Atlantic were able to reduce turtle bycatch by 92 percent and increase the catch of their target species. On the other side of the globe, Australian prawn trawlers have used devices to cut bycatch by more than 60 percent without adversely affecting their catch.

Such measures that boost the resiliency of aquatic populations and ecosystems should work in tandem with broader policies to protect our waters from looming threats like climate change and pollution. Coral reefs, kelp forests, and estuaries—the nurseries of the sea, where young fish develop and biodiversity thrives—are particularly vulnerable. Water temperatures just 1 degree Celsius above the norm can decimate coral reefs, leading to the loss of fish and other animals that depend on them. Global warming is already altering fish habitats, distribution, and migration patterns.

With oceanic ecosystems hitting their limits and demand for fish climbing, the farming of fish in pens and ponds supplies a growing share of the world’s food fish. From less than 1 million tons in 1950, global aquacultural production hit a new high of 42 million tons in 2003, making it the fastest-growing food production sector in the world. Farmed fish production, growing 9 percent a year over the last decade, is offsetting the decline in wild catch, sustaining the total availability of fish at 21 kilograms per person. (See data.)

Nonetheless, aquaculture will alleviate pressure on wild fish only if it is done wisely. The construction of near-shore fish farms frequently requires the razing of sensitive wetlands.

These farms also harbor diseases and concentrate fish wastes that can lead to harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen dead zones. Making matters worse, farmed carnivorous fish can eat several times their weight in wild fish, which only adds to pressure on such resources. Though salmon, trout, shrimp, and 73

FISH prawns currently account for just 9 percent of world aquacultural output, production of these carnivorous fish is doubling almost every eight years, rapidly increasing demand on wild stocks.

Better methods of fish farming include onshore mixed-species production of herbivorous fish, like carp. China, which accounts for some 68 percent of world aquacultural production, has developed an efficient carp polyculture using freshwater ponds. Fish farmers in several countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, have even had success growing fish within rice paddies, where the fish need limited or no added feed and their wastes fertilize the grain crop. Modeling future aquacultural endeavors on such lower-impact systems would be an important step toward a more sustainable fish harvest.

Informing consumers about the environmental effects of the fish they eat—whether from the sea or a farm—allows them to vote with their wallets for sustainable food choices. The Marine Stewardship Council, an independent global certification agency, has thus far certified 12 fisheries as sustainably managed, and 263 MSC-certified products are now available in 24 countries. In addition, a number of other organizations, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the National Audubon Society in the United States, provide information for the public and restaurateurs on the status of a variety of food fish.

Without careful management, the limits of the world’s fish supply—a resource once thought to be boundless—will become all too clear. Sustaining global fisheries and sound aquacultural practices are in the best interest of fishers and consumers today as well as for the generations to come.

Copyright © 2005 Earth Policy Institute

* Note: Taking into account probable over reporting by China, the world’s largest fisher, as well as climate-related fluctuations in the large catch of Peruvian anchoveta, the global wild catch has actually been falling for longer than the official records reveal—dropping 660,000 tons per year since 1988. For more information see Reg Watson and Daniel Pauly, “Systematic Distortions in World Fisheries Catch Trends,” Nature, vol. 414 (29 November 2001), pp. 534-36.

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EXTINCTION

"Many biologists believe the earth is in the midst of the sixth great spasm of extinction. The first five were naturally occurring (ice age, meteors, etc.), But this one's man-made. The pressure humans are putting on plants and animals is enormous. From deforestation to habitat encroachment to pollution, it's all adding up to rates of extinction that are profound. American scientist magazine recently estimated that three species are lost per hour — that's 72 species a day, 26,280 per year. " Charlie Moore, CNN Senior Producer of "Planet in Peril"

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EXTINCTION June 2001 Niles Eldredge An ActionBioscience.org original article

The Sixth Extinction About 30,000 species go extinct annually. There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past.

As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year — which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis — this “Sixth Extinction” — is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed.

Extinction in the past The major global biotic turnovers were all caused by physical events that lay outside the normal climatic and other physical disturbances which species, and entire ecosystems, experience and survive. What caused them?

The previous mass extinctions were due to natural causes.

First major extinction (c. 440 mya): Climate change (relatively severe and sudden global cooling) seems to have been at work at the first of these-the end-Ordovician mass extinction that caused such pronounced change in marine life (little or no life existed on land at that time). 25% of families lost (a family may consist of a few to thousands of species).

Second major extinction (c. 370 mya): The next such event, near the end of the Devonian Period, may or may not have been the result of global climate change. 19% of families lost.

first evolved, also remains difficult to pin down in terms of precise causes. 23% of families lost.

Fifth major extinction (c. 65 mya): Most famous, perhaps, was the most recent of these events at the end-Cretaceous.

It wiped out the remaining terrestrial dinosaurs and marine ammonites, as well as many other species across the phylogenetic spectrum, in all habitats sampled from the fossil record.

Consensus has emerged in the past decade that this event was caused by one (possibly multiple) collisions between Earth and an extraterrestrial bolide (probably cometary).

Some geologists, however, point to the great volcanic event that produced the Deccan traps of India as part of the chain of physical events that disrupted ecosystems so severely that many species on land and sea rapidly succumbed to extinction. 17% of families lost.

How is the Sixth Extinction different from previous events?

The current mass extinction is caused by humans.

At first glance, the physically caused extinction events of the past might seem to have little or nothing to tell us about the current Sixth Extinction, which is a patently human-caused event. For there is little doubt that humans are the direct cause of ecosystem stress and species destruction in the modern world through such activities as: • transformation of the landscape • overexploitation of species • pollution • the introduction of alien species

Third major Extinction (c. 245 mya): Scenarios explaining what happened at the greatest mass extinction event of them all (so far, at least!) at the end of the Permian Period have been complex amalgams of climate change perhaps rooted in plate tectonics movements. Very recently, however, evidence suggests that a bolide impact similar to the end-Cretaceous event may have been the cause. 54% of families lost.

And because Homo sapiens is clearly a species of animal (however behaviorally and ecologically peculiar an animal), the Sixth Extinction would seem to be the first recorded global extinction event that has a biotic, rather than a physical, cause.

Fourth major extinction (c. 210 mya): The event at the end of the Triassic Period, shortly after dinosaurs and mammals had

We are bringing about massive changes in the environment.

Yet, upon further reflection, human impact on the planet is a

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direct analogue of the Cretaceous cometary collision. Sixtyfive million years ago that extraterrestrial impact — through its sheer explosive power, followed immediately by its injections of so much debris into the upper reaches of the atmosphere that global temperatures plummeted and, most critically, photosynthesis was severely inhibited — wreaked havoc on the living systems of Earth. That is precisely what human beings are doing to the planet right now: humans are causing vast physical changes on the planet.

What is the Sixth Extinction?

We can divide the Sixth Extinction into two discrete phases: Phase One began when the first modern humans began to disperse to different parts of the world about 100,000 years ago.

Phase Two began about 10,000 years ago when humans turned to agriculture. Humans began disrupting the environment as soon as they appeared on Earth.

The first phase began shortly after Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and the anatomically modern humans began migrating out of Africa and spreading throughout the world. Humans reached the middle east 90,000 years ago. They were in Europe starting around 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals, who had long lived in Europe, survived our arrival for less than 10,000 years, but then abruptly disappeared — victims, according to many paleoanthropologists, of our arrival through outright warfare or the more subtle, though potentially no less devastating effects, of being on the losing side of ecological competition.

Everywhere, shortly after modern humans arrived, many (especially, though by no means exclusively, the larger) native species typically became extinct. Humans were like bulls in a China shop. They disrupted ecosystems by overhunting game species, which never experienced contact with humans before. And perhaps they spread microbial disease-causing organisms as well.

The fossil record attests to human destruction of ecosystems: Wherever early humans migrated, other species became extinct. Humans arrived in large numbers in North America

roughly 12,500 years ago-and sites revealing the butchering of mammoths, mastodons and extinct buffalo are well documented throughout the continent. The demise of the bulk of the La Brea tar pit Pleistocene fauna coincided with our arrival.

The Caribbean lost several of its larger species when humans arrived some 8000 years ago.

Extinction struck elements of the Australian megafauna much earlier-when humans arrived some 40,000 years ago.

Madagascar-something of an anomaly, as humans only arrived there two thousand years ago-also fits the pattern well: the larger species (elephant birds, a species of hippo, plus larger lemurs) rapidly disappeared soon after humans arrived.

Indeed only in places where earlier hominid species had lived (Africa, of course, but also most of Europe and Asia) did the fauna, already adapted to hominid presence, survive the first wave of the Sixth Extinction pretty much intact. The rest of the world’s species, which had never before encountered hominids in their local ecosystems, were as naively unwary as all but the most recently arrived species (such as Vermilion Flycatchers) of the Galapagos Islands remain to this day.

Why does the Sixth Extinction continue?

The invention of agriculture accelerated the pace of the Sixth Extinction. Phase two of the Sixth Extinction began around 10,000 years ago with the invention of agriculture-perhaps first in the Natufian culture of the Middle East. Agriculture appears to have been invented several different times in various different places, and has, in the intervening years, spread around the entire globe.

Agriculture represents the single most profound ecological change in the entire 3.5 billion-year history of life. With its invention: Humans did not have to interact with other species for survival, and so could manipulate other species for their own use humans did not have to adhere to the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, and so could overpopulate Humans do not live with nature but outside it.

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EXTINCTION Homo sapiens became the first species to stop living inside local ecosystems. All other species, including our ancestral hominid ancestors, all pre-agricultural humans, and remnant hunter-gatherer societies still extant exist as semi-isolated populations playing specific roles (i.e., have “niches”) in local ecosystems. This is not so with post-agricultural revolution humans, who in effect have stepped outside local ecosystems.

Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems - converting land to produce one or two food crops, with all other native plant species all now classified as unwanted “weeds” — and all but a few domesticated species of animals now considered as pests.

The total number of organisms within a species is limited by many factors-most crucial of which is the “carrying capacity” of the local ecosystem: given the energetic needs and energy-procuring adaptations of a given species, there are only so many squirrels, oak trees and hawks that can inhabit a given stretch of habitat. Agriculture had the effect of removing the natural local-ecosystem upper limit of the size of human populations. Though crops still fail regularly, and famine and disease still stalk the land, there is no doubt that agriculture in the main has had an enormous impact on human population size: Earth can’t sustain the trend in human population growth. It is reaching its limit in carrying capacity.

Estimates vary, but range between 1 and 10 million people on earth 10,000 years ago. There are now over 6 billion people.

The numbers continue to increase logarithmically — so that there will be 8 billion by 2020. There is presumably an upper limit to the carrying capacity of humans on earth — of the numbers that agriculture can support — and that number is usually estimated at between 13-15 billion, though some people think the ultimate numbers might be much higher.

This explosion of human population, especially in the postIndustrial Revolution years of the past two centuries, coupled with the unequal distribution and consumption of wealth on the planet, is the underlying cause of the Sixth Extinction.

There is a vicious cycle: Overpopulation, invasive species, and overexploitation are fueling the extinction. More lands are cleared and more efficient production techniques (most recently engendered largely through genetic engineering) to feed the growing number of humans — and in response, the human population continues to expand. Higher fossil energy use is helping agriculture spread, further modifying the environment.

Humans continue to fish (12 of the 13 major fisheries on the planet are now considered severely depleted) and harvest timber for building materials and just plain fuel, pollution, 78

and soil erosion from agriculture creates dead zones in fisheries (as in the Gulf of Mexico). While the human Diaspora has meant the spread, as well, of alien species that more often than not thrive at the detriment of native species. For example, invasive species have contributed to 42% of all threatened and endangered species in the U.S.

Can conservation measures stop the Sixth Extinction?

Only 10% of the world’s species survived the third mass extinction. Will any survive this one? The world’s ecosystems have been plunged into chaos, with some conservation biologists thinking that no system, not even the vast oceans, remains untouched by human presence. Conservation measures, sustainable development, and, ultimately, stabilization of human population numbers and consumption patterns seem to offer some hope that the Sixth Extinction will not develop to the extent of the third global extinction, some 245 mya, when 90% of the world’s species were lost.

Though it is true that life, so incredibly resilient, has always recovered (though after long lags) after major extinction spasms, it is only after whatever has caused the extinction event has dissipated. That cause, in the case of the Sixth Extinction, is ourselves — Homo sapiens. This means we can continue on the path to our own extinction, or, preferably, we modify our behavior toward the global ecosystem of which we are still very much a part. The latter must happen before the Sixth Extinction can be declared over, and life can once again rebound. © 2005, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Educators have permission to reprint articles for classroom use; other users, please contact editor@actionbioscience.org for reprint permission. See reprint policy.

Paleontologist Dr. Niles Eldredge is the Curator-in-Chief of the permanent exhibition “Hall of Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at the City University of New York. He has devoted his career to examining evolutionary theory through the fossil record, publishing his views in more than 160 scientific articles, reviews, and books.

Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisisis his most recent book. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/directories/ faculty/E.htm

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now that i have some ideas THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY Now that I had a bunch of ideas written and drawn out, it was time to narrow down my options. Looking back through my notes and sketches, I had five ideas that I felt had good merit and deserved further design development; Industrialized Bees Endangered Footprint Carbon Emitting Tree Last Drop Depleting Fish Out of these, I ended up choosing 3 as final concepts.

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Concept Development: THE BEES THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I was set on bringing the issue about the disappearing bees to life. I decided that I wanted to comment on the 'industrialization' of bees through an illustrated bee that would disappear (through the use of thermochromic ink) into a steam punk type of bee. I began by illustrating bees and researched what I thought they looked like. My initial sketch ended up being a wasp, and not a bee at all, however I did start to develop the illustrative style I was wanted.

After many sketches and simplifications of the drawings I ended up not using it. There was just something that wasn't right about it, and it just didn't look as beautiful as I had hoped. So I moved on. But here you will see the progressions of the bee.

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BEES Something is happeneing to the

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Concept Development: FOOTPRINT THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY The amount of species that the planet is losing every hour is staggering! I knew that this was one issue that I really needed to address through my posters. I had the idea of a human footprint made up of many footprints of endangered species. These are the species that are next. The idea is that with the disappearing of the species, our own

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species may be next. It is also a comment on the impact we have had, especially as consumers, on the planet.

Originally I had a lot to say, and thought that lots of copy of text was fine – I was definitely mistaken. I want viewers to see and read my posters quickly. I know that people don't have time to stand and read paragraphs of copy.

We are loosing 3 species every hour.

They are disappearing off the face of the planet, never to return again. The planet is no longer able to sustain life the way it once was. We are in the middle of a mass extinction that is equivalent to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Why don’t we see it? Why is this happening?! The reasons might shock you. It’s something so out of sight and something that we as people, and especially as consumers don’t think about. It’s our stuff! The reason for all this chaos with the weather, the water shortage, the chemicals in our water, the plastic ‘lakes’ in our oceans, the droughts, floods, mudslides and hurricanes and now the mass extinction of many species on the planet is all a result of our dire need to have the latest gadget, car, purse and a two dollar burger. We don’t think about it because they want you to buy, buy, buy, without considering that the place they get their meat for that “juicy” (ammonia cleansed) burger has caused massive deforestation in some of the planets most fertile and abundant regions. These regions are home to some of the planets most endangered species, and until we make the connection of where our stuff actually comes from before if reaches the store, species will keep disappearing and soon it might be our turn. the simple solution It’s easy. Take a second to think about what you buy. Do you really need it? And if you do, be thoughtful with your choices when you buy. Think about how well it will last, and where it comes from. If you don’t know, look into it. They can’t hide this stuff from us forever. Buy local, buy 100% recycled, buy organic, cut back on your fast food intake and your body and the planet will thank you. We as consumers often don’t realize that we have the ability to tell these corporations that are responsible for destroying our planet, to shove it. And they will change, because of the right choices that you make.

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Concept Development: TREE THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I thought that it would be a good idea to design a poster that had to do with the deforestation issue. Throughout my research I discovered that trees are the number 1 emitter of CO2 into the atmosphere due to the incredible amount of trees being cut down for paper products such as toilet paper.

With the reduction of our consumption of virgin trees we can drastically reduce the CO2 emissions, and if we stop deforestation all together, we can stop climate change.

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This idea lead to representing the tree as both an emitter and as a fighter of CO2. This idea didn't turn out so well when I began to execute it. It ended up looking like the odd one out. I wasn't using any typography as changing elements in the other posters, and the only way to get the transition to work would be to make the top of the tree entirely black, and that just didn't sit right with me. This idea just didn't work out.

FIGHter AGAInst co2

emItter oF co2

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Concept Development: DROP THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY I kept sketching this idea of the changing Drop. A drop is representational of so many things; life, water, oil. I decided that it would be interesting to overprint the black thermochromic ink over a thin layer of blue, to represent the planet's water shortage due to manufacturing processes and our dire need to consume. Many researchers have suggested that in the near future we will see wars over fresh water rather than oil. Originally I was going to have a giant black

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drop that disappears into a smaller blue drop. The black thermochromic paint is quite transparent and when I was doing the test prints, the blue was visible from underneath.

I ended up using two small drops. It works with my concept either way. We are down to the last drop with both oil and fresh water, and come to think about it, neither should seem to have more than the other, which is another reason why the drops should be the same size.

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Concept Development: FISH THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY The disappearing fish concept was a natural fit for the disappearing ink – what better way to show disappearance?

It was an idea that I wrote in my sketches on multiple occasions in different forms... and although I was pretty set that the Tree concept was going to be my third and final design, it ended up not being the case. I'm glad it turned out this way because the fish concept just worked out so well, especially since it's got the extra interesting element of a repeating pattern.

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one step too far Over consumption has led to the planet losing 3 species every hour.

Change will happen because of the choices that you make.

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Down to the last drop

Over population and consumption has led to massive water shortages – similar to what we have see with oil.

Change will happen because of the choices that you make.

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not so plenty anymore Due to over fishing and mass consumption, 90% of the world edible fish will be gone within 50 years.

Change will happen because of the choices that you make.

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I handmade each print by screen printing the image with the thermochromic ink (mixed with transparent base). Any blue that was in the image was also screen printed. The type was printed on a Vandercook letterpress. This is what gives the type a tactile quality that you can feel. Out of Sight is in colour, while Out of Mind is blind embossed.

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LAST WORDS When I started this project back in September 2009 I had no idea where it would lead me. It began with a passionate curiosity for handmade craft. I wanted to learn to letterpress, screen print and to unlock the shackles from my laptop. I knew that I wanted to take this year to explore something that I didn't know, and I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to explore these curiosities in my core project.

Over the past couple of years, my curiosities focused on global issues of crisis. I often found myself asking; why isn't anything being done? The more I learned about what was going on, the more I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. People need to know what is happening to the planet and they need to know that they can help stop it! We need to collectively agree that what we, as humans, have done to the planet is awful and it's time to clean up the mess we've made. During the past two semesters I learned an incredible amount about these issues and I am hopeful that my posters will give people knowledge of what I have learned and possibly give them a reason to think about the choices they make.

The choice to change is in everyone. I wanted to portray a message of change within my posters through a unique experience. My exploration led me to a discovery of an incredible disappearing (thermochromic) ink. It was perfect! The issues that I have been so concerned with, and so frustrated with, were issues that people either didn't know about or didn't see first hand and therefore they were out of mind. This discovery was a breakthrough moment during the year.

There were many moments throughout the year that I had a tough time with getting the ideas. Those moments helped me to have a personal growing experience of my own. I realized that I am a walking ball of stress and until I figured out how to unwind and relax my thoughts, I felt that I was at a stand-still. There was a moment when Keith told me to just relax, let yourself go, and the ideas will come. It seemed a little nonsense at first. But then I started hearing it from others that are close to me as well. So I grabbed my notebook, my favourite pen and escaped. It was then that I was finally able to get the ideas I wanted – the ones that I was so desperately needing. They flowed like water – some good, some not to good... but none-the-less they were ideas that made sense.

This project not only taught me how to explore an idea and discover new methods of production, but it also taught me about myself as a designer. It was an incredible learning experience that lead to the development of work that I am truly proud of.

Amanda Keenan April 2010

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Sources Adbusters. September/October 2009 issue Addicted to Plastic Ian Connacher, Bullfrog Films, 2010 Aesthetic Apparatus. 1999. Sept 2009 – April 2010 http://www.aestheticapparatus.com/ Chen Design Associates, Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-Made Elements in Graphic Design. (Ohio: How Books, Oct 2006) Chromazone. TMC Hallcrest. December 2009 http://www.chromazone.co.uk/index.htm CTI: Innovation Requires Extreme Inks. December 2009 http://www.ctiinks.com/index.php Delana, " 10 Different Types of Guerrilla Marketing" WebUrbanist, November 2010 http://weburbanist.com/2008/06/03/the-history-of-guerrilla-marketing/ Eldredge, Dr. Niles " The Sixth Extinction" American Institute of Biological Sciences. June 2001. April 2010. http://actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html Earth Policy Institute. February 2010 http://www.earth-policy.org/ "Every Image has a Sound, Ad Campaign" Toxel. Jan 21 2009, October 2010 http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/01/21/every-image-has-a-sound-ad-campaign/ Food Inc. Robert Kenner, Rover Road Entertainment, 2008 Foster, John. New Master's of Poster Design: Poster Design for the Next Century. (Rockport Publishers; 1 edition, April 30, 2008) Greenpeace. 2010. September 2009 – April 2010 http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/ Hayes, Clay. Gig Posters Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century. (Quirk Books; First Printing edition, May 13, 2009) "How To Get Media Attention In One Easy Step (And It's Free)" Six Pixels of Separation – The Blog. Sept 23 2008. October 2009 http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/how-to-get-media-attention-in-one-easy-step-and-its-free/ Johnson, Anna. " How To Get Media Attention Online" Kikabink News: Internet Marketing News and Comment. July 7 2009.

November 2009. http://www.kikabink.com/news/how-to-get-media-attention-online/ "Kleercut: Wiping away Ancient Forests" Greenpeace. 2004–2009. September 2009 http://www.kleercut.net/en/ Leonard, Annie, The Story of Stuff. (Toronto: Free Press, 2010) Maravelas, Paul, Letterpress Printing: A Manual for Modern Fine Press Printers. (Oak Knoll Press, August 31, 2005) "Mini Cooper: Test Drive" Ads of the World. April 2010 http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/mini_cooper_test_drive?size=_original

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