Totally tote bags
Seemingly appearing from nowhere around five years ago, the tote bag is at its best seen as both a canvas for good design and a reusable eco product.
Jitesh Patel, illustrator, designer, and owner of Jai Studio, started the Tote Prints Blog in 2009, documenting the phenomena and the increasingly sophisticated graphics and imagery it throws up.
Now she’s compiled her favourite designs in a new book. Some of the best ones play with the form of the bag itself and it seems artists are coming up with increasingly imaginative ways to promote their own work or a client message.
The work of over 120 designers and illustrators has been selected, including that of Angus Hyland, eBoy, Gemma Corell, Jon Burgerman and HUGE.
I don’t completely buy into the tote bag eco argument. Obviously the idea of a tote bag is much more sustainable then that of a plastic bag, which is by its nature weak and yet has a stubbornly enduring after-life as a piece of litter.
However I’m fairly sure masses of the less-well-designed tote bags, and those peddling awful messages, end up on the tip, particularly after conferences.
This little book though highlights, by a Darwinian virtue, the tote bags which are the most desirable, and therefore the most likely to be kept, and used – the survivors.
The Tote Bag: Mini Edition by Jitesh Patel is priced £9.95, will be published by Laurence King in February 2013
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