Boring... 4th October '08

Thats it, I'm ditching my first Idea for the first brief because quite frankly its crap. I'm meant to call myself a designer with a wider train of thought and the best I could come up with is my car. A car is a mode of transport nothing more. Maybe if I stop being so materialistic and thought outside the box I'd then be able to do something worth while. This is what I came up with:

Moving into a new place this term has meant we've now got to pay bills. This has stirred me even more to think about energy consumption and what we can do to save. It's always in the news these days, everywhere you go you're being told to save and be more energy concious. On numerous occasions I've heard people say and I'll put this loosely "All this energy saving/ environment saving is rubbish" I just feel like turning around to them and saying, "You know what MATE, listen to yourself." I have to grin and bear it, especially at work. Offering product replacement cover on cheap items to be greeted with "er... no thanx, when it breaks I'll just throw it away" another one is carrier bags. I worked out vaguely the amount of carries bags Argos give out a year could potentially be 7.2million. Obviously there's various things to take into account. But even if it was half of that 3.6million bags is disgusting.

I'm off on one here so to bring it back on topic, I'm now going to focus my A3 poster on the campaign to turn stuff off standby and question it by saying 'Is it enough?' I was drived towards this after researching various energy saving tips that I could implement in my abode.

I stumbled across a phrase called 'Phantom Load.' This is never mentioned but according to statistics 75% of electricity in the home is used while appliances are turned 'Off'. Off as in not in use but still plugged in with the switch on.

Here is a Wikipedia definition of 'Phantom Load'

Standby power, also called vampire power, phantom load, or leaking electricity, refers to the electric power consumed by electronic appliances while they are switched off or in a standby mode. A very common "electricity vampire" is a power adapter which has no power-off switch. Some such devices offer remote controls and digital clock features to the user, while other devices, such as power adapters for laptop computers and other electronic devices, consume power without offering any features.

I'm going to try and design a poster that will convince people that its not enough.

In a hunt for answers I stumbled across an american university that has implemented a competition for dorms to see which dorms can save the most electricity. I think personally its a great idea, though people shouldn't need a competition to cut down.

You can see their website here.

Thats all for now, but I'll be busy with my pen.