Cattle, beef and leather products and factories may seem an obscure subject for a set of drawings. It is. They were made whilst I researched the recent project, the Slaughtering the Amazon report.
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The report we designed for our friends at Greenpeace is proving a real success. Today they announced the following.
“After working with us (Greenpeace) over the past few weeks, Clarks have today announced that they will ensure the suppliers that provide the leather for their shoes from stop sourcing it from deforested areas of the Amazon. This is a really positive move – they’re not only rejecting leather from illegally logged areas of the region, but from any cattle ranch that is being run on deforested land.
This means there’s a unified front from the shoe companies we challenged over Amazon leather in their supply chains. All have now committed to avoiding leather that is implicated in Amazon destruction. Clarks join Adidas, Nike, Timberland and Geox, who have all made similar commitments over the past few weeks.”
Well done Clarks! And all the other shoe companies too.
You can read the full story on the Greenpeace site
And if you want to see what the report looks like here’s the original story.
For a couple of months in early 2009 I worked with Punk Publishing, the people who create the Cool Camping books. Together we created Wild Swimming Coast.
It’s a wonderful guide to the best and often very well hidden beaches, pools and caves of Britain’s coastline. Featuring regional background and detailed maps, directions to the swims and hundreds of great photos – many by Daniel Start – the author.
Helping define the sequence of the book, designing the layout of all 256 pages as well as editing photos meant that this was an engrossing project. This was also the first book I’ve designed for retail so I’m very happy it’s been well received with the title currently being reprinted and having received reviews such as this on the Waterstones site, “this beautifully produced book is sure to inspire you to discover and enjoy all that’s great about our British coast”. I’m off to cool my ego down in the sea.
Buy the book, find out more about wild swimming or check out Punk Publishing’s other titles.
If you have a book you want designing please contact Paul.
Recently I’ve been working with Greenpeace designing this report which contains all kinds of visually compelling ways to show how Brazil’s cattle industry, the world’s single largest current cause of deforestation, is linked to supermarket processed meals, leather goods and beauty products.
Using a variety of graphic techniques I created the report to like it was pieced together in the field; photos stacked on each other, arrows drawn onto maps show physical movement of cattle, detailed maps display the extent of the deforestation with satellite and aerial imagery side-by-side with ground level photography proving the point. Watching The Wire gave me a few tips on how to knit elements together.
The wheel diagrams were designed to communicate that big brands are linked to cattle products of suspect origin. These diagrams sat alongside maps showing the trade within Brazil and brand logos. To be absolutely sure the bloody nature of the subject matter was conveyed I splattered logos, data and many of the report’s pages with graphic blood.
At a whopping 140 pages, this is by far the longest, most complex and most involved report I’ve designed. I’m really keen to find more investigations to visualise as the diversity of graphic material involved and the story telling nature of it is a real test of skill and narrative making.
Since it’s launch at the beginning of June the World Bank has pulled out of the final tranche of a $90m deal financing the further expansion of Bertin. Wal-Mart are now insisting that the companies named in the report can display legal chain of custody for beef products and Carrefour in Brazil have pledged to cancel contracts with Bertin.
You can read more about the Brazillian cattle industry’s impact on the Amazon at Greenpeace’s site where you can also download pdfs of the report itself.
If you have a report or campaign you want designing please contact Paul.
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