Rare: An Intimate Portrait of Extinction

Did you know that at least 100 species go extinct each day? From National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore comes Rare — a breathtaking yet heartbreaking visual record of some of the world’s most endangered creatures. From flies to wolves, Sartore’s stunning close-up portraits evoke a bittersweet awareness of the magnificent world we live in and the rapid rate at which we are running it into the ground.

Caribbean flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber)

Spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta)

Red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas)

Tawny frogmouth

Damaraland mole rats (Cryptomys damarensis)

Hawk-headed parrot (Deroptyus accipitrinus)

West Usambara two-horned chameleon, (Kinyongia multituberculata)

With 80 arresting and intimate animal portraits, the book aims to give a voice to the amazing creatures likely to go extinct without people ever knowing they existed and, in the process, to serve as a call to action for preserving the planet’s most precious living resources.

Rare does for animals what Cedric Pollet’s Bark did for the world’s trees, tickling our deepest dormant awe for nature’s remarkable diversity. The book is part of a 3-year project documenting Earth’s biodiverisity and bringing a richer understanding of the Endangered Species Act, a 1973 policy measure attempting to mitigate the environmental consequence of economic growth and development.

via Dump; images courtesy of National Geographic/p>

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Economy Map: Visualizing the Eco-Impact of Industry

What crude oil production has to do with interface design and public advocacy.

We’re big believers in data visualization as a sensemaking mechanism for the world. Economy Map, a new project from Jason Pearson, former President and CEO of the sustainability institute GreenBlue, aims to be just that by offering an interactive visual map of the US economy and its impact on the environment.

The ambitious project draws on data from the 2009 EPA report and maps the envionmental impact of specific sectors of the economy, ranging from crude oil production to advertising and nearly everything in between. But the project’s greatest strength lies in its capacity for pattern-recognition, illustrating not only the effect of specific sectors but also how they affect one another to exponentially impact the environment.

Each sectoris represented by a dot on a grid. A bubble around it depicts the size of its impact on one of the environmental factors examined — ozone depletion, human toxicity and global warming. Lines connecting the different bubbles illustrate “flows” between these sectors — for instance, see how many different sectors oil production draws on.

Though the interface is a bit clunky and counter-intuitive, Economy Map is not only an important educational tool for us in the “general public” but also a useful resource for public interest advocates and policymakers as they strive to identify areas where environmental impact can be reduced.

via FastCo Design

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LoudSauce: Crowdfunded Advertising for Causes

What bus shelters have to do with civic engagement and Marshall McLuhan.

The key folly of cause marketing can be reduced to low awareness and an unconvincing voice — weak, creatively uncompelling messaging that fails to reach a sufficient number of people and fails to engage those it does reach. Or, to frame it in Marshall McLuhan‘s famous medium/message paradigm, an insufficient medium carrying a toothless message. We’ve previously looked at how UK nonprofit DoTheGreenThing is solving the creative merit problem by borrowing talent from the traditional ad industry to reshape the message. Now, startup LoudSauce is borrowing, quite literally, media space from the traditional media industry to reshape the medium.

Dubbed the world’s first crowdfunded media buying platform, it does for causes what Kickstarter and other platforms do for creative projects, allowing fans and supporters to microfund media space for the causes they’d like to support who couldn’t afford it on their own. Part civic activism, part socialist capitalism, LoudSauce aims to give ideas that matter the share of voice they deserve, help bring smart projects to life and, ultimately, create a new market for conscious creative ad content.

Our vision is to transform the medium of advertising from one that primarily drives consumption to one of civic participation. What if we had more power to shape which messages were promoted on our streets? What if our billboards inspired us toward a future we actually wanted?” ~ LoudSauce

LoudSauce already helped Green Patriot Posters raise $3,200 to get beautifully designed sustainability PSA posters onto San Francisco’s bus shelters. This week, they’re helping Brain Pickings favorite The Story of Stuff microfund a teaser to reach 2 million people during A&E’s show about hyperconsumption, Hoarders.

If you have or know of a cause or pro-social message that needs to reach more eyeballs and eardrums, LoudSauce would like to hear from you. Meanwhile, browse the current campaigns to microfund and keep an eye on the site as it continues to grow — we think it’s a winner, and that’s our two-cent microcontribution.

Our only hang-up with LoudSauce is that, for a project that aims to up the ante on creative engagement in marketing communication, it suffers from tragically low production value and creative merit on its meta-communication, from the site design to the videos promoting the campaigns being microfunded. We wish they’d do a LoudSauce campaign for LoudSauce itself, getting funding to hire a good designer and a good microdocumentary filmmaker. We’d certainly contribute.

via TBD

In 2010, we spent more than 4,500 hours bringing you Brain Pickings — the blog, the newsletter and the Twitter feed — over which we could’ve seen 53 feature-length films, listened to 135 music albums or taken 1,872 trips to the bathroom. If you found any joy and inspiration here this year, please consider supporting us with a modest donation — it lets us know we’re doing something right.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.