We’re guilty of overlooking good green graphic design sometimes on Inhabitat, but here’s a great example of visual communication as an effective tool for environmental and social change. London-based illustrator Jody Barton is just one example of the power of graphics as an education tool, producing a plethora of bold illustrations focused on environmental crises. Using hand-drawn typography, Barton’s illustrations evoke preconceived notions, stereotypes, and challenge beliefs around these issues, and make us stop to think about our environmental impact.
Educated in London at Camberwell College of Arts and the Royal College of Art, Barton has extensive experience working in animation and sound, with work featuring in the likes of Dazed and Confused, Vice, the Face, D&AD, Pantheon Architecture, Creative Review, Intersection, Viewpoint, WAD, and Wonderland magazines.
13 Responses to “JODY BARTON’S Environmental Graphic Design”
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Kitschy… old school… I like it. Thank you for sharing her stuff!
Just to clarify Brad, Jody Barton is male.
Jill,
Someone has evidently edited it already. It had more illustrations earlier and one of them stated F_____ing in it’s description.
According to Dr.James Lovelock, of the ‘Gaia Theory’ fame (“the entire Eath is a living system, us included…”), what we’ve already done to the environment will cause the Earth to be in a feverish state for betwen 1000 to 100,000 years. The difference is if we take steps to immediately end carbon emissions from fossil fuels, stop deforestation, and stop taking more land for agriculture… or take our time about getting to taking these steps. He details this in his book: “Gaias’s Revenge’. So if ‘Billions dying in 50 years’ is the problem with this post… Lovelock claims that if we don’t switch over to Nuclear power generation as quickly as possible… that Billions will die. He says that if we don’t switch quickly… he predicts that only 500,000 himans will populate the Earth at the end of this century, mostly in the cooler polar regions because the rest of the planet will be too hot (up an average of 8 degrees in the North and 5 degrees in the equatorial regions). That’s down from a high of about 8 Billion in about 100 years. Is he right ? Do we want to roll the dice and find out ? I’ll take Nuclear please !
As a reguluar reader of inhabitat whose ‘interesting’ comments often get deleted, or disappeared due to their being inadvertently as ‘spam’…I’m puzzled by your upset with this post Bob. Maybe I’m not getting something here ? Any clarification is welcome.
Bob is obviously referring to the web site of Jody Barton. Yes, it is not for everyone but he is doing some great art. And you don’t have to follow the link or continue to view his work if you do. Inhabitat posted an example of his work that was appropriate for this web site. Should they not have posted a referring link to the artist’s web site? It is a common practice.
Hey, man this is neat-o! Although I’m confused as to why Bob might find his illustrations offensive. Perhaps because Jody is challenging Bob’s deeply held beliefs about societal impacts on our environment?
I’m sorry to say, but I am not a fan of this kind of graphic work. The messages are trite and the illustration style is lackluster and unoriginal at best. It doesn’t speak to me, it doesn’t make me want to go out there and change my ways. It is overdramatic and states the obvious. There are much better examples of communication design that addresses the concerns of the environment and its current state of crisis. All I ask is that we all do our homework before presenting this kind of information to the public. I respect the cause and the effort, but we have to be careful about presenting work that is nothing more than trendy. I say this because I was directed to this site from a new and respectable source: The book “World CHanging,” who had nothing but good things to say about this site. I guess you can say that I am surprised.
Thank you,
Peter C. Art Director, Communication Design
Oh, and excuse my grammer. It’s late in NY.
I see the messages as poorly executed sketches that I would not consider presenting a client let alone publish online. If the ideas are strong enough I would have a different opinion but they are basically at best inaccurate. “The last tree (or several) will probably remain after life as we know it has been severely affected beyond what any normal person would find acceptable”. “In 50 years several billions of people may be refugees but are unlikely to die”. Perhaps another should be “Never let the facts get in the road of a good headline”. However, the “Bomb as globe / teeth / coffin” is the one good and quite a strong idea.
For some sane responses to greener graphic design please review our Print for Environment guide online at Society for Responsible Design.
PS The SRD and SRD ChangeX, etc. have many other guides, events and information for designers.
PPS If the original article has been edited to remove a “F______g” comment then Bob Es original emails should also be deleted as they are now misrepresentations.
Just to clear the confusion up for everyone – yes there was apparently originally an image in this post that used the F word – so now I understand Bob’s comment. And since that image has been removed, we will also remove Bob’s original comment so everything is clear and there is no misrepresentation. Thanks everyone!
-Jill
Publisher
Inhabitat.com
Jody does some interesting typographical work. I’m not partial to the hand drawn/woodcut style any more than the next guy, but I like what he’s doing, and I think you can find great things in the details. As for the F word, please… we’re grown people dealing with big ideas and addressing bigger problems than whether cursing is appropriate.
FYI, we cover lots of graphic and visual artists at the Groundswell Blog, and if you’re looking for a resource to mine for good material, let’s chat!
I want to see your exibition of envirenmtal graphic design. thanks
hi, i’m a 21 years old visual communication design in indonesia,
i thought this site was for EGD such as wayfinding, because i am really looking for it
anyway, nice to meet you