Trying something new here on the blog. Just for fun, let’s see who can come up with the best caption for this image. Winner gets a $15 Whole Foods gift card.

For a chance to win, leave a caption in the comments below. Make it relevant to Modern Evolution and make us laugh! You’ll also help your chances by tweeting as follows:

<Your caption here> http://bit.ly/aRdO1h @modevolution

Enter as many times as you want before Friday 8/6/10. C’mon people, I know you can come up with something good!

Well, this is a seriously disturbing trend. A new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says that the fattest U.S. states in 1991 were as thin as the leanest states in 2009. Today our thinnest state has a 19.1% obesity rate among adults, while our fattest, Mississippi has an obesity rate of 33.8%. Yikes.

Among the causes of this epidemic, outlined on TreeHugger, are suburban development, sedentary lifestyles, the economy, and farm policy:

Because current market incentives, imposed by the government, encourage factory production of protein and mass production of high fructose corn syrup, we have (surprise) super-cheap, mass-produced chicken, pork, beef, and sweet treats.

Hopefully we’ll start to recognize this horrific trend and come together on ways to get our fat asses back on the right track.

(Illustration by Tavis Coburn)

The Story of Cosmetics

After a week of nonstop internet chatter about (and with) the Old Spice Man, we get this great video firing back at the makers of our personal care products.

This is the fourth installment of a terrific video series which began with the must-see Story of Stuff. With these videos, Annie Leonard and Free Range Studios have done an amazing job of taking big complex issues and explaining them in a way that even a child could understand.

For whatever reason, the first thing that popped in my head when I saw this design work was a Steve Martin quote from The Jerk:

I’m gonna buy you a diamond so big it’s gonna make you puke.

Of course this identity design for Johnson’s Backyard Garden has nothing to do with buying diamonds. And “puke” probably isn’t the best word to use when you’re talking about the healthy and delicious foods you’d get from an organic vegetable farm. But every once in a while you see someone’s work that’s so impressive, it makes you just a little sick to your stomach.

If JBG’s goal was to compete at farmers markets, all they would have needed is a nice typeface to stand out among the sea of Papyrus. But instead, they were lucky enough to have Austin’s Ryan Rhodes on the job, who clearly went above and beyond. The identity he created would stand out anywhere, even on a blog dedicated to identity design.

I made the lettering using pieces of wood that had been inked and printed. So I tried to do some illustrations or beets and carrots and making the letters JBG with those pieces. It felt right. It reminded me of plotted farm land, or crop circles, or quilts. It was very elementary to a degree, a back to basics, building block exercise for me.

This kind of creative exploration and thorough artistry should be every designer’s goal with every project: Give ‘em something so amazing it’ll make them puke.

More images below…

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Nasty water makes for effective marketing. Donations to UNICEF’s Tap Project help provide untainted water to those in need.

(via Denver Egotist)

This looks like such a simple idea, yet brilliantly executed. The UPACKS concept by Patrick Sung is a sheet of cardboard that can be folded to ship packages of any shape, thus saving on unnecessary filler. It would also save space in delivery trucks, which saves fuel. Yay!

(via Inhabitat)

Ugly Casanova’s “Wave Goodbye” from the ‘180° South’ soundtrack.

According to NASA, last decade was the hottest on record. And now we’re experiencing what is shaping up to be the planet’s hottest year on record. So the question is… just how hot will we get before people broadly except the fact that this is not a good trend?

(Image by Mark Weaver)

Best Buy, the Mecca of electronic doodads and thingamabobs, is ramping up its sustainability initiatives with an ambitious plan to collect one billion pounds of e-waste over the next five years.

It’s a clever marketing move—as consumers become more aware of the issues surrounding e-waste, they will increasingly want to shop at responsible electronics retailers. And Best Buy is firmly establishing itself as the easiest retailer for e-waste recycling.

Accepting responsibility for old stuff in order to sell more new stuff. Not exactly a wash, but it’s a huge step in the right direction.

(via bmdesign)

Wait… what just happened?

21-year-old British industrial design student Kevin Scott came up with the innovative ‘Bendy Bicycle’ to be wrapped around posts and locked-up without the need for a separate lock or chain. Pretty cool.

(via Gizmodo)