Thursday 24 October 2013

Stamping my Hart with a Squash!

When invited to help with my local Transition Town steering group, the first thing I couldn't help but do was redesign the identity.

The Transition movement is a network of worldwide local organisations trying to make their local area less dependent on oil and fossil fuels, more self sufficient, and try to tackle the problem of climate change, all from a local standpoint, the idea being that if every City, Town, Village and community did this then the collective effect worldwide would be huge.

Hertford originally got it's name for being the 'ford' where 'Harts' (stags) came to cross the water, and the 'Hart' has become a symbol of the town.

The idea for the identity was to visually suggest different people and local communities coming together to move the town forward, combining into the head of the (forward moving) stag. I also wanted to symbolise the local countryside surrounding the town.

Although there are no restrictions or guidelines as to how each Transition group identity should look, I wanted to give it a hand crafted feel, so I decided to cut out all the individual elements from of a butternut squash, then hand print them. I then scanned them in and pieced it back together in illustrator.

...the rest of said squash of course was not wasted, and went to very good (and pretty tasty) use!

(click images to enlarge)









































Next challenge - redesign the website.

http://www.transitionhertford.org.uk

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Having Problems with Gas?!!

We ship most of our (fossil) gas into the UK on huge container ships from Qatar...
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/newsdesk/energy/data/where-do-we-get-our-gas
...which isn't cheap, OR particularly eco-friendly.

OK, so we don't want huge gas price rises, and we don't really want to Frack the very ground we walk on (and poison the very water we rely on). So, apart from using much less, what's the alternative?
It could be renewable Biomethane. Ecotricity and even the National Grid agree:
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green-energy/our-green-gas/why-green-gas
http://www.nationalgrid.com/corporate/About+Us/climate/press/020209.htm

...let's just hope our frack-friendly Government see the benefits too.