Vandal and VOC free

Ran across this site while doing research for one of our clients. It's a virtual graffiti maker with real-time collaboration. Choose a wall and start a tag battle with the world. You still have to watch out for punks though.

Nike Considered, Trike Considered

The first generation of Nike's Considered Boot, their sustainable shoe, has been discontinued. But this isn't bad news. It means you can find it at half retail cost and that a round of new designs are available. More importantly, the Nike Considered team has proven that it really is possible to design and manufacture a stylish product... so much so that the principles developed in the Considered line are now being applied across all of Nike's product engines.

There are two more reasons we like this shoe: first, one of our founders wears a pair to the office on occassion. The second reason is a secret we can't divulge until June 30th. But here's a hint.

Hybrid Carpet. Cut/Loop Cars.

We've orchestrated a really exciting event for NeoCon this year on the subject of dematerialzing the creative process featuring Pixar Animation Studios (yes, THAT Pixar), Penny Bonda and Nood. Why? We realized just how "normal" Tricycle is in a broader cultural context. If currency has changed from cash to credit cards and letters have moved from envelopes to e-mail, what's so surprising about carpet being shown as SIM?

We asked Susan Szenasy, Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis to provide an historical perspective and moderate a panel. Bo Barber, president of Nood, and Jay Shuster, CARS and Star Wars concept artist, agreed to present their work as case studies. (Nood — a Tricycle customer — starts in the digital realm and ends up in the physical realm. Pixar does the opposite.) Penny is going to wrap it up with an industry perspective and discuss how dematerialization helps eco-initiatives.

We're co-hosting the panel in the Ultron showroom on the 10th floor of the Merchandise Mart on Tuesday, June 13 at 4pm. ASID is offereing a CEU credit for attendees so it's definitely worth your time. Hope to see you there.

Pömed

Verte has organized the first ever Pömed to be held June 20 in NYC. The eco-event will donate partial ticket proceeds to Sanctuaries for Families and Architecture for Humanity; a silent auction of green and sustainable products will benefit BPeace and Kids with Cameras.

The event organizers asked us to exhibit our waste-reducing, design-centric SIM alongside Stop Global Warming and Earth Pledge, as three examples of organizations making an impact on the design world. Additional fashion oriented exhibitors include Interface and DesignTex.

Pömed is a community event during "Until the Violence Stops NYC"; a festival of music and performances organized around V-Day.

Beautiful Bessie

Imagine high-end furniture with eloquent fabric covers; top it off with the use of organic cotton and sustainably harvested wood. Think this is impossible?... meet the Q Collection. The collaboration of interior designer Anthony Cochran and environmentalist Jesse Johnson, the company boasts an impressive medley of residential furnishings: quality furniture without the use of polyurethane, formaldehyde, toxic chemicals or organic pollutants. All fabrics are produced from natural materials with non-toxic dyes.

What do you use?

OK, we aren't crazy about the eco-solution pictured here. But we do like grassroots solutions for bringing those big, seemingly abstract issues like energy use down to earth.
Big Frog Mountain is a renewable energy company located in our hometown, that specializes in solar tunnels and panels. Their site has energy-use calculators for determining your family's energy consumption and just how many solar panels you would need to get "off the grid."
Or, closer to our UK office: visit the British Petroleum website and check out their carbon footprint calculator.
Or ask Uncle Sam: use the EPA's Personal Greenhouse Gas calculator to determine what effect your energy use is having on the environment and to find out ways to cut back energy use.

Mass Custom(er)ization

"Mass customization" is everywhere from tennis shoes to candy to clothing... to carpet.

Glass from the past

Recycled glass by Esque, hand-blown and processed in a wind-powered electric furnace. Made to order. Velocity Art and Design.

Global sustainable leadership

We're pleased to say that last week the IIDA, AIA and CoreNet Global created a first-ever special recognition for Tricycle in its annual Global Sustainable Leadership Awards (especially because of SIM). The big winners this year were HOK, Herman Miller, and Texas Instruments.

From Floors to Fruit Bowls

We've been emailing back and forth with Kelly Atkins of Carpet Burns for a year, but we finally got to meet her at the annual CARE conference. Her company transforms old axminister carpet into a heat treated product and sells it by the sheet... a brainwave that came to her when she, still a university student, accidentally 'heat treated' the carpet in her apartment while ironing clothes on the floor (lucky oops). Their product been used as hard flooring, to create Wilton treys and handbags, and on and on... see some of the design objects and accessories she initially created to sell at the Chelsea Craft Fair.

Fuel Cell Motorcycle

British company Intelligent Energy has created a hydrogen fuel cell bike with roadworthy looks. Env is a near zero-emissions motorcycle that get's about 100 miles per battery charge and can reach speeds of 50 mph. IE, if you're reading this, Tricycle president, Jonathan Bragdon, will participate in a consumer pilot program.

Candy, the 'zine equivalent of a hybrid car

Candy is an Irish design, fashion and culture magazine designed to download as a PDF and print (or not) on your own device, circumventing the need to chop down a small forest to deliver a month's worth of design entertainment to the world. Sweet.

from Treehugger: reducing carpet sample waste

found this text on Treehugger, who got it from BuildingGreen. Nice!

"Tricycle specializes in creating simulated carpet sample using paper. Currently, designers use real carpet samples in the design process, which is quite wasteful and costly. Tricycle uses a "digital tufting" software that simulates the actual placement of yarn in a tufting machine to create amazingly realistic images. Other alternatives, such as photography or texture-mapping over color fields, are not accurate enough to be useful,” claims Caleb Ludwick, market intelligence manager at Tricycle. Tricycle's paper samples require zero oil, and only about 5% as much energyand water as real samples, and are more likely to be recycled after they’ve been used. ::