Great news from Creative Review this month. A 3sprong creative collaboration have founded Three Trees Don’t Make a Forest, a not for profit enterprise set up to help everyone involved in design and advertising to rethink their working cultures and start to produce sustainable creative solutions that really work.

“When it comes to sustainable design, there are no excuses. Sooner or later our industry will have to rise to the challenge. As creativity is our business, we should be comfortable with the notion of making our design work that bit harder; creatively and for the environment.”

The Three Trees’ UK founders are Sophie Thomas of sustainability studio Thomas Matthews, Caroline Clark of Ecofriendly Printing Resource Lovely as a Tree and Nat Hunter of design studio Airside. The three green creatives intend to continue work with their respective award-winning design practices, while working within the industry to share their collective 25 years’ experience in creating effective sustainable design.

A special day for a honourable farewell: at the age of 90 designer Ettore Sottsass died on Monday 31 December 2007 in his house in Milan. Sottsass helped to lead Italian design to worldwide reputation in the 60s and became famous for several objects: one unforgettable ikon is »Valentine« – the glaring red portable type writer he designed in his 30 years lasting co-operation with Olivetti.

Sottsass opened his first studio in Milan in 1947 and since then he worked as an architect and designer. Only a few weeks ago he participated in building up a Sottsass retrospective in Trieste that is still running till March. Working for major companies like Olivetti, Knoll, Artemide or Venini, the designer never forgot to be at the forefront of the design avantgarde and cultivate an intelligent design discourse, concretised by movements like »Anti-Design«, »Studio Alchimia« or »Memphis«, that run counter to the idea and principle of »form follows function«.

More information at New York Times. General information about Ettore Sottsass from Oxford University Press.