Cool Hunting

Fairpack
Fairpack is Central Saint Martins student Mark Hadfield's Master's thesis and plan to reinvent the shopping bag as we know it. Still in development, Hadfield's project tasks designers with creating a graphic to adorn biodegradable plastic bags, recycled paper bags, and cotton bags as low-cost replacements for standard less eco-friendly sacks. His mission fuses ethics, design, and environmentalism to "unbrand" the common grocery bag,...

Nau sneak peek
We paid a visit to Nau a few months ago and told you all about this exciting new activewear brand. As their January 2007 launch nears they've started adding content to their site, including the first preview of their Spring 2007 line. They've also put up a video, narrated by the design team, about their unique design philosophy, and the Collective features inspirational stories....

Maak Eebuh T-Shirts
Harlem-based design house Maak Eebuh is launching their debut line of T-shirts "The War Series," aiming to provoke comment and build dialogue about the war in the Middle East. After working in costume design and high-end fashion at Yigal Azrouel, designer Jade Schulz started the line of limited edition tees earlier this year as "a brand whose artwork filters important issues of the moment...

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
A truly unprecedented endeavor, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, provides cutting-edge solutions and ideas for constructing a more livable future. With contributions from more than 60 acclaimed writers, including a forward by Al Gore and an introduction by Bruce Sterling, this volume has been likened to the hippie bible, The Whole Earth Catalog, but retooled for the iPod generation. Worldchanging contains...

Nau
Nau is the tipping point for Eco-Luxury. It means “welcome” to the Maori in New Zealand, but it also means welcome to a whole new way of designing, manufacturing and selling product—the socially responsible way. We stopped by their LEED Gold certified offices/studio in Portland, OR to hear what they were up to, get a sneak peak at the gear and learn about about...

The Urban Forest Project
The Urban Forest Project is a design-centric socially conscious event in two parts. The first is a collection of 185 banners that will be on display in Times Square (from 1 September to 31 October 2006). The tree-themed banners (a selection can be seen above) represent work by a who's who of the creative community. All of them can be seen (and enlarged) on...