In my last design article, I wrote about one of the best commercials I have seen and how it was created by Starbucks, a semi-heartless corporation. Although the power of corporate design is nothing new, I figured I’d highlight another fantastic design by a corporation, but this time, the perpetrator of this beauty makes bombs, light bulbs (damn you fake light) and some horrible TV shows.
General Electric is one of the largest corporations in the world and creates products and services in a number of areas. Recently, one of their highest profile projects has been their “Ecomagination” endeavour. GE has traditionally been very environmentally conscious which is one of their redeeming qualities, but now they are fully pushing the “green”.
Their site for Ecomagination is pretty nice, but one area is just plain bad-ass. The Smartgrid subsite is pretty much perfect. Blending interactivity, information, great visuals and new technology, the site informs viewers about GE’s plans to upgrade the energy grid and push new sources of energy. This, again, is a great cause which everybody can see the need for.
Using Flash, amazing illustration and a nice series of navigation animations, the site pulls you through some tedious numbers in a way which drives home their point: the new grid will be awesome!
There is also this crazy thing using your webcam, a printout and your microphone but you gotta try it yourself.
So, why complain about this? They obviously had some talented designers and developers work on this which is great in these tough economic times. And green energy is a need which has to be promoted globally.
However, GE isn’t a very good global citizen in other aspects of their business and some of this push to the green side might be some attempt at good will. GE is essentially an environmental criminal. They are the fourth-largest producer of air pollution in the US (source) In 1999 GE paid a $250 million settlement for polluting the Housatonic River and are constantly being fined for polluting the Hudson River. As well, they are creators of massive amounts of toxic waste and can claim the third highest amount of Toxic Superfund sites. Well done!
So, they are trying to clean up their image by pushing green in really well designed ways. Nice. Oh, they help make nuclear bombs, missiles and jets which they sell to countries illegally.
Not enough evidence of evil doing? They released “Kath and Kim”, “Lipstick Jungle”, “Joey” and “The Real Wedding Crashers”. As well, they cancelled “Freaks and Geeks” so you know they really have no soul.
Although, they did show “Alf”….
