The Greenpeace Green my Apple campaign

When Greenpeace launched their Green my Apple campaign site a year ago I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut, but I think I managed reasonably well. Now that Veerle Pieters has posted an article about the Greenpeace Green my Apple project I can let everyone know that I did part of the front-end coding for the site.

I’ve been a huge Apple fan for a long time, so I was a bit disturbed when I found out that they weren’t doing their very best to protect the environment. If I could do anything to improve that situation, I thought I should. Being an Apple fan does not mean I will ignore problems.

Just like Veerle I had my doubts about the whole thing at first, mostly because the project involved copying (or ripping off, if you prefer that term) Apple’s design. It was for a good cause though, so morally I didn’t feel that it was a problem. It was Apple sending their lawyers after us that had me worried. But after Veerle told me that Greenpeace would take full responsibility if anything like that should happen I jumped on board. Besides, I only did the coding, not the graphic design.

Coding-wise this project isn’t very complicated, though there were a couple of accessibility challenges. I managed to find what I think are reasonable solutions to most of these challenges, but if I redid the project today I would probably do some things a little differently.

If you look at the code and find strange things like unescaped ampersands or images with no alt attributes, rest assured that those were not in the markup I handed over ;-). For more details on part of the coding as well as the story behind the graphic design, read Veerle’s post Greenpeace Green my Apple project, which I co-authored with her.

The campaign is over now but the site, which won a Webby award in the activism category, is still online.

Finally, like Veerle I’m asking you to please not turn the comments area into a political discussion about Apple vs. Greenpeace vs. the environment.

Posted on September 28, 2007 in Apple

Comments

  1. September 28, 2007 by James Clarke

    Nuke the whales!

  2. September 28, 2007 by Peter Gasston

    I think you would have been safe, considering you weren’t passing yourselves off as Apple and didn’t use any of their code. Print and TV often imitate styles to make a point. Would have been an interesting test case, anyway.

    I liked the campaign a lot, and had no idea you were involved. Congratulations.

  3. October 2, 2007 by Eamonn

    I remember seeing this site some time ago, never looked at the code however.

    It is kinda cool that you had the whole Mac glassy tabs done in a CSS layout where as the actual apple.com site still had their nav wrapped in tables. (Thankfully this is now gone)

  4. October 2, 2007 by Web Designer

    Hi there,

    Just a quick message to say “well done”! great design, css looks good and seems overall nice and compliant … hats off!

    Peter.

  5. October 3, 2007 by Jonny Haynes

    Well done, great work and a worthy cause.

  6. October 8, 2007 by Tom

    Hi Roger,

    Thanks for your help on the site, any code strangeness I probably have to own up to when updating the site.

    We preferred to think of it as ‘reusing and recycling’ Apple’s style for the good cause of a greener Apple :)

    Tom

    Greenpeace

  7. October 10, 2007 by Alex

    I wish I had known about this site sooner. Seems like it got the job done without me though. Congrats on being involved with such a successful project

  8. December 12, 2007 by Birgit

    Apple had innovation ideas with all of their inventions.And this with very good designs as well.Congratulations.

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