Your Next Bag Is Hanging On A Lamppost Downtown

Interesting banners, but what’s it all about? you may ask. What’s this Urban Forest Project? Well, you may be digging around for your mobile or a stick of Juicyfruit in the bottom of a bag made from one of those banners some time soon.

For the Urban Forest project, the AIGA hung 150 banners by Portland-based designers, artists, photographers, and illustrators in downtown and the Pearl which overtly or obliquely visually reference tree as metaphor for sustainability in a run up to Earth Day. Printed with water-based inks and partially biodegradable materials, the banners are destined to have second lives—like the wildly popular Swiss Freitag messenger bags made from used truck tarpaulins and Vy & Elle bags made from recycled billboard vinyl—fashioned into bags by Queen Bee Creations. The bags will be sold at auction to benefit Friends of Trees.

The project originated as the 2006 Urban Forest in Times Square by Worldstudio, developed in conjunction with AIGA NY and Times Square Alliance. Portland’s AIGA chapter took the Urban Forest ball and ran with it all the way to the banks of the Willamette. More poignant and melancholy in Times Square, here Urban Forest feels like a celebration of our own tree-studded Portland…and just as the blooms were turning to tiny bright leaves.

Check out more of the Portland banners here.

On a related note, we wouldn’t mind having a tote made from the killer orange OCAC banners on SW Broadway downtown. Delicious typography and a snappy orange.

POSTED: April 26th, 2007 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: design | TAGS: design | No Comments »

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