Urban Forest is the name for AIGA’s national project to enhance awareness of ecology, the negative effects of suburban sprawl, and the value of green space in urban areas.  To accomplish this noble task, the design community is challenged to design banners that will create an urban forest in the city center being targeted.  A discussion on Detroiter Online provides more on the sponsorship chairs perspective.Started originally in New York, AIGA’s creative approach to the greening of the urban jungle has spread to Denver and now to Ann Arbor.  O2 Creative, the work highlighted here, is one of 30 that are on target for the Ann Arbor project.  Antoine Dubeauclard, President of Media Genesis and Sponsor Chair for the Ann Arbor AIGA project, is hoping to be even more successful as the concept is brought to Detroit, with an ambitious goal of bringing over 60 designers together to showcase Detroit Design talent and green the city to boot!  Corporations or individuals interested in getting involved can contact Antoine by email ant1@mediag.com to learn more about the benefits of sponsorship.

You can feel good about your involvement in this project as well, because in the spirit of sustainability and recycling, once the installation is taken down, the banners will be converted into mail bags and auctioned off to raise money for a local Ann Arbor environmental charity.  Profits from the NYC sale of totebags made from the banners went to Worldstudio AIGA Scholarships and the AIGA/NY Mentoring Program to sustain the next generation of design talent.

AIGA is the professional association for design, and has numerous members throughout the Metro Detroit area.  If you are interested in  designing a banner, contact Antoine.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Advocacy, Art, Design, Downtown, News, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.