Are we over-hyping our concern for plastics and pollutants that by far outlives us? It’s not as if it has any direct impact that we should worry about. Noooo need to worry.

I think a part of all of us living now has been desensitized to pollution. The fact that so much of it has already been translated to mass media is yesterday’s news. We’ve all seen images of landfill again and again; pipes of smoke filling the air with black soot; acid rain causing forest to die and wither. So the list goes on. But it all seems so distant and alien to us, and not at all a part of who we are and how we live. Those are rather the immediate and visible effects of pollution decades past. What we have on top of that now is the slow and chronic effects of invisible toxins that enter our bodies on a regular basis.

I must admit I’ve been under the influence and persuasion of co-authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie with their book Slow Death by Rubber Duck[y]. The authors have influenced my perceptions about the everyday object. Take your synthetic plastic bags, plastic microwave containers, plastic table sets, water bottles, baby bottles, bins, shower curtains, you name it, all of which are taking over every corner of our lives. Harmless? Yes, to the naked eye. Under the microscopic lens however, these scientists telltale a chemical known as Bisphenol-A which can be easily increased within the short span of days to triple and quadruple within your body. What it correlates to are signs of prostate deformity in early childhood, prostrate cancer in men and breast cancer in women. A piece of the puzzle just fell into place as to why there’s such an increase in cancer cases. Chemicals and molecules like Bisphenol-A are easy to accumulate in the body, easy to pass to the next generation, but highly persistent.

What doctors and practiced physicians do for us are ends to an already existing problem, what we can do to reduce if not eliminate the sources of these problems begin at the initial stage of design and production. Rather than preach to an audience on what a mess we’ve made to the environment and to ourselves, designers, engineers, and thinkers of our community are proposing affordable solutions that will rid us some of these toxic soup bubbling within our bodies.

Simply detoxing yourself by eating organic foods isn’t enough, because chemically treated materials such as wrappings, packing can leach chemicals into your body fairly easily. Alternative substitutes are beneficial on several levels if we all made an effort:

Natural fiber products such as wool, cotton, hemp, and recycled polyester are naturally resistant to flames. Though on the pricier ends of commercial shelves, they can eliminate some paranoia about clothing or fabric deliberately catching fire from high temperatures. If by chance it does catch on fire, they are resistant to rapid spread of the flame. And since these materials has a high durability and is time tested from an ecological standpoint, that you buy can last much longer than synthetically made, disposable materials.

Because these materials have biological properties that does not need to by synthetically mimicked, the production of these materials would require less energy. In here, the reduce from the three Rs model is definition at its best.

In the reuse department, organic materials such as bio-polymer have much the versatility compared to its man-made cousins in synthetics. These organically compounded materials can be molded into purpose-driven products to better suit  the need of the market. And unlike conventional artificial materials, under the prolonged exposure and oxidation process, it will again return to the environment as minerals for topsoil.

We can potentially create and repurpose any left over organic product in the main time to suit our needs. There is much in the creative aspect to explore the shape, composition and natural properties of natural materials. To end things on a positive note, some inspirational packaging from Japan and Thailand gives us some insight as to the possibilities of human imagination that are aesthetically and biologically beautiful.

by: Mary Zhao
http://derooted.com

It’s been about a month already since I started internship at derooted. In this month there was this one time I forgot to bring my pen tablet. Working with the trackpad on MacBook irritated me all day. (Although I love MacBook’s multi fingers trackpad feature) Whether you’re professional graphic designer or someone who just love doing something arty on your computer, a pen tablet is the best tool to make your life much easier.

When I first got my pen tablet, I wasn’t interested in graphic design or computer-related illustrations. I did a lot of analog drawings on paper. I didn’t find any use for the tablet. I remember when I first tested out the tablet from pure boredom, I realized how easy it was to use with computer games because I scored much higher with the pen tablet than the mouse (especially the kind of shooting game that require you to aim and shoot at target).

Now as a graphic design student, my pen tablet is a necessary tool when I work on projects. I think to me, the advantages of the tablet can be summarized into three distinct points:

1. First, the pen tablet is especially helpful when you do precise photo retouching and illustrations. Once you get use to drawing in pen, drawing without it is like the drawing with your non-dominant hand, your feet, or with a pen in your mouth. I feel handicapped without out it right by me when I work. It also gets less tired after I work due to the natural way you hold a pen as opposed to a mouse while you work.
2. Using pen tablet saves a lot more time and its more efficient ways. I work much faster with the tablet. Absolute positioning feature of the pen tablet gives me a 1:1 representation of the screen to that tablets so I can move the cursor to anywhere on the screen instantly and this is much faster than moving and dragging my mouse on my desk. I dislike the mouse in my school lab because their wire is super short that I need to lift up and reposition the mouse every time I try to move. But the tablet solves this problem since I can reach anywhere on the screen within the size of the tablet. In this case I think the size of the tablet and the screen is important. I’m using Wacom Intuos3 6”x8”Pen Tablet with my 17inch MacBook Pro. I love this size since this is not too big to carry around and not too small for using with either mouse or pen. According to my friend who is using 9”x12”tablet with 17inch MacBook Pro, using the bigger tablet in Final Cut is a pain in the rear since it’s not precise enough to anchor the frames. Bigger is not necessarily better unless you want to do illustrations without zoom in to details always. I prefer using my smaller tablet to minimize my arm motion so I can save a lot more time.
3. The best thing about doing illustration on any computer using the pen tablet is that there is always an option where I can erase, rewrite and fix as much as I want without damaging my original copy. However, the only disadvantage of the pen tablet is that, because I can rewrite as much as I want, I can’t stop keep retouching same file. Even if I am satisfied with the illustration that I do, I may feel inclined to reedit, and so the editing process never ends.

Now there are a lot more variations in pen tablet. There are Bluetooth variations which will add to the portability of the tablets and will extend the range of usages and application of the devices too. The wireless device provides you complete freedom in controlling the screen from afar. There is also LED Backlight Monitor with Pen Tablet Technology which allows you to work directly on the screen with natural hand-eye coordination. If you don’t have pen tablet yet, why not? The pen tablet is definitely the tool that will make your life much easier.

By: Ayaka Sano
http://derooted.com

Sometimes reflecting on your educational experiences once they are over allows you to view them with a sympathetic outlook you wouldn’t have had otherwise. For example, while I was in school, tacked on for two or three days at the end of the semester in second year we were given a quick crash course in InDesign. As a three year program with a specific focus on packaging design, it just wasn’t a priority. The end product was to make a booklet, which I did as a guide to knowing your monsters, and all said and done I loved it, made a nice glossy little piece of work and got a great mark.

I felt pretty solid about this until over a year later, when I had my second substantial InDesign experience in the form of a 100 plus page catalogue. Without realizing it, I was about to be plummeted into a world of InDesign head first. I soon found myself cursing my instructors for everything they didn’t teach me. It was all their fault every time I couldn’t get something to do exactly what I wanted, because I felt that the tools were there, just hidden slightly out of reach. Like a petulant child, I thought how *totaaallly unfaiiiir* it was that no one had told me these things and had as a result condemned me to sleeping in the office, toiling night and day, and taking the hard way for so many things.

With a little more distance between myself and the catalogue now, I’ve gained a different perspective on things. We, as designers, love these programs because of the seemingly never ending plethora of things they can do for us. We curse their shortcomings, not out of ungratefulness or being spoiled, but because ease of use and increased efficiency are our bread and butter and by complaining, improvements can be made.  And sometimes, when you’re just freshly out of school and tackling something so intimidating, it’s easy to forget that these programs are so dense in their abilities that we have to take the initiative and time to get to know them so that we are comfortable with them. 6 semesters is a short time to learn anything, and a 3 year course in the Adobe Suite alone would still probably leave many subjects untouched and many tricks and shortcuts undiscovered. Thank goodness the swell folks at Adobe made some easy to use, useful tutorials for anything I may have missed in the meantime.

My dad said to me at the start of my internship “You don’t know what you don’t know yet.” A classic dad-ism maybe for it’s seemingly circular logic and had I been a 15 year old punk still I probably would have rolled my eyes and said something bratty. But I’ve found this true and a calming motto when I’m in the midst of something new since then. You learn by doing, and until you try you have the luxury of being comfortable in your ignorance.

By far, the best part of my experience at Derooted has also been the scariest parts.

And by that, I mean the haunted elevators.

Kidding. The stairs are haunted, not the elevators.

But seriously, I mean that the times when I’ve been made to work out of my comfort zone or at things that aren’t necessarily my specialty in design are the times when I’ve learned the most, even when I’ve been frustrated.  By this measure, working with InDesign on such a huge project was one of the most horrible, rewarding experiences I’ve had in a really long time.

And like all horrible, rewarding experiences, I’m so glad it’s over and more prepared should it happen again.

-Jenn King
http://derooted.com