Green Thing Blog

Pentagram partner, Angus Hyland, wanted to create a simple visual that would make recycling feel less like something you should do and more like something you want to do. For inspiration, he turned to the universal symbol for recycling - as well as last year's must-read novel. 

“I’ve always loved the recycling symbol, designed by Gary Anderson in 1970. It’s a Mobius strip, with the arrows providing direction and a sense of action. It looks to me influenced by another big international symbol, created slightly earlier, the woolmark - and my version, being stripy, marries the two, making the original warmer and more fluid.”

“It’s hand-drawn, to highlight the importance of individual action. And it features many different shades of green, because although green is a shorthand for the environment, for some reason graphically we tend to treat it as a block colour, ignoring all the variety that occurs in nature. So I decided to use it in as many shades as possible, highlighting both the variety in nature and the many different ways to save the planet. As an added bonus, it also gave me a nice pun for the title.” 

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The shower scene in Psycho is one of the most famous moments in movie history – and it gave Michael Bierut, partner at Pentagram, the perfect way to scare people into cutting their shower short:

"Taking a brisk, water-efficient shower is the best way to start a productive day. And the most famous shower ever filmed was one that was notoriously interrupted. Had Janet Leigh been a bit quicker, she may have made it to the end of the movie!"

We’re selling 23 limited editions of the 23 posters printed on FSC paper with sustainable ink for £23 plus VAT, postage and packing with all proceeds going back to the Do The Green Thing charity. You can buy this one here.  Or browse the shop here.

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Dan Norris and Ray Shaughnessy, creative directors at Wieden + Kennedy, are certified meat addicts – and they wanted to create a poster that encouraged themselves and others to go easy on the meat:

“We're pretty greedy, especially when it comes to meat, so it seemed like an obvious subject for us to deal with. We hope that by encouraging people to 'Make Meat a Treat' we can help them to reduce their meat consumption which in turn will help to reduce the industry's CO2 footprint. And from our selfish meat-eating point of view, we're looking at it as a form of carbon off-setting so we can keep enjoying it too. It's a classic win-win-win situation.”

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The second of Do The Green Thing's 23 Posters in support of WWF's Earth Hour on March 23rd is by Pentagram designer Marina Willer.

Marina used a photo of her right foot to create a poster encouraging people to put down their car keys and put on their trainers:  

"We can panic about where the car keys are, get grumpy in a traffic jam, run out of petrol before we find a parking space, have a fight with the pay machine, and get a congestion charge penalty to finish off. Or we can walk and enjoy the world.”

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Welcome to Day One of our new poster campaign in support of WWF’s Earth Hour.

In the 23 days running up to Earth Hour, we’ll be releasing one poster a day from a leading designer or artist. The aim is to inspire as many people as possible into green actions, so please help us by sharing our posters with everyone you know.

Plug Out, our first poster, is by Pete Fowler, illustrator and monster creator, who wanted to inspire people to live a life less electrical: “I was on a train recently and I noticed that every passenger had an electric device plugged in and I thought it was insane. Gadgets are great but oh my god we’re consuming so much power, let’s pull back a little bit.“

Read more on tumblr and follow the conversation on Twitter with #23posters.

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