Rebranding Death, Part 1

Rebranding Death, Part 1, originally uploaded by john m flores.

Via Flickr:
Does anyone else remember those roach motel commercials from the 80s, where roaches could check in but they couldn't check out. Twas a time in the not so distant past when having a noxious concoction of chemicals underneath the kitchen sink and used liberally around the household was standard operating procedure. But we're getting green now, right? Sustainability is the buzzword of the day, and we've all gotta think about the chillins, don't we.

That's the challenged faced by the package designers of Raid, whose very name and Oakland Raider's inspired logo speaks of death and unhealthy things. How do you update such an icon? Simple, add some green, add the word "Earth", throw in some flowers, and put it all in a innocuous spray bottle that looks like it can hold soap or shampoo. The white picket fence is a nice touch too. But that logo is still dark and aggressive, and the flowers and picket fence are kind of offset by the word "Killer".

No worries, the world is filled with talented designers up to the challenge...

Where does it all go? No, this is not the existential meaning of life question. This is the more mundane, more basic question - where does all the crap that we throw away go? Yesterday’s news. Yesterday’s newspaper. Impersonal computers. The not so latest and not so greatest. The thing that at one point in time filled a need in our lives yet now just crowds the curb with spent pizza boxes and empty bottles of beer.

With any luck, your junk has been immortalized in the work of Chris Jordan.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Mr. Jordan, in the tradition of a great many photographers and artists, has turned the ordinary into the extraordinary and made the mundane magnificent. Check out his work.

Land. Fill.

Been feeling acutely enviro lately, perhaps a side-effect of watching the TED presentations. An image/concept that’s co-habitated my mind lately is the idea that everything in your local Walmart will be in a landfill someday. Not some of it. Not most of it. Everything.

Someone should do a study, estimating how much of your local Walmart will be in a landfill in 5 years, 10 years, and how long nearly all of it ends up as garbage.

Do we really need all of it?