Designers often don’t realize that they have a say in how their designs are produced—whether print or digital—and sometimes they simply don’t want to deal with the added complexity. By overseeing production you not only have the ability to make sure your design reaches its full potential, you also have a chance to limit the carbon footprint of your work. Sustainable design requires patience, creativity, thoroughness, and a deeper level of involvement in your work.

Designers can also consider their own carbon footprint in their day-to-day operations. They can commute by foot, bike, bus, or maybe even an electric car charged with solar power. They can use renewable resources to power their studio, use energy efficient appliances and fixtures (e.g. LED lighting), compost food waste, and incorporate many other sustainable living practice into the studio.

Potentially the greatest impact a designer can have on the environment is on their clients and other designers. By spreading the sustainable mindset to the clients and peers you work with, you can end up making a much greater impact than you could with just focusing on your own practice. Additionally, if you’re in the position to do so, you can provide your services only to clients that are doing good things. If you can go one step further and encourage other designers to consider all of these things, the ripple effect could be bigger than the Great Pacific garbage patch.

The most tangible way to practice green design is through print production oversight. This means engaging in a deeper level of involvement in the production of the print piece you’re designing. You can consider the paper the piece is being printed on (recycled content, certifications, bleaching process, etc.), the energy source used to manufacture the paper and print the run, the printing process and the composition of the inks being used, the shipping distance of the paper and finished products, the amount of trim waste, the binding method and adhesives being used, and the re-usability or recyclability of the final piece. Each print project has unique challenges.

If you’re in a rush, the most important thing is to specify a paper that is 100% PCW (postconsumer waste) recycled. Often 100% PCW stocks will have other green attributes including being manufactured with renewable energy, processed chlorine free (PCF), FSC certification, and so on. Also, try not to ship the paper overseas or by rushed (airmail) delivery.

Online

• Re-nourish (we use the project calculator for nearly every print project)
• Our Portfolio (most projects have information on the print production and materials we’re using)
• INGEDE (in-depth information about about de-inkability of various production methods—a problem affecting certain digital presses)
• NAPIM (use to check the BRC content of the ink your printer is using)
• Sustainable Packaging Coalition (free downloadable pdfs with tons of information about designing sustainable packaging)

Green Design Books

• Green Graphic Design by Brian Dougherty (the best book for beginners, this book is filled with case studies and lots of practical information)
• Sustainable Graphic Design by Wendy Jedlička (the best book for advanced green graphic designers, a vast amount of information) - SustainAble by Aaris Sherin (another great beginner book)
• Our Eco Pocket-Sized Notebook (an easy resource that guides you through specifying environmentally responsible paper)

Most of the paper we specify is made by just a few paper mills: Mohawk (Loop, Options), French Paper (Construction, Speckletone, Kraft-Tone), Neenah Paper (Environment), or New Leaf Paper (everything). They all have different strengths and appropriateness so we suggest getting swatch books from each mill. When it comes to printing, one of the most important things is to work with local vendors. As a result, it’s not possible to provide an easy vendor list for production partners since it varies depending on which area you’re working in.

If you want to be thorough, and avoid sacrifices in cost or quality, green design takes time. Time to research and test processes and materials, time for setting up press sheets, etc. When we first started practicing green design, we didn’t receive compensation for any of our green efforts (e.g. specifying eco friendly paper or print process), but clients always saw it as a bonus—an added value. Now that we have a significant amount of experience and case studies, clients do engage us, at least in part, due to our expertise on the matter (and hopefully this will increase as we diversify and increase the scope of our eco case studies).

We intentionally bill ourselves as “an environmentally responsible design studio” and as a result, green design is automatically included in work. We build in time to oversee the production of each print project we take on, and every print project we oversee is sustainable to some degree—it’s intrinsic in our approach to print projects. Occasionally we’ll need to dive deep into research on a new production process and often the time to do so is at least partially unpaid. With large volume print projects, our efforts to minimize waste provide an immediate ROI for green design, so it saves the client money (which is the driving force behind many large corporations “going green”). In those circumstances, the value is clear, but if the client sees green design as an added expense with no added value, you’ll find more difficulty in finding interested parties. So the answer is yes, clients will pay for green design but it will probably take some unpaid investment time in the beginning to be able to price it as a valuable service.

It’s a bit tougher to make greener websites, but still worth considering. A lot of smart optimizations for the web also affect energy waste. Efficient code, optimized assets, and intuitive navigation all contribute to less energy used on the site’s server. It’s worth it to look for green hosts, or to estimate your power usage and offset the energy your site requires with carbon credits yourself. Often, you can use the web strategically to reach a broad audience with less waste than a traditionally printed campaign.

We’ve adopted a vegetarian diet due to the enormously positive environmental impact incurred by doing so (it saves an immense amount of water) and it also didn’t require deviating from our principal diet of pastries, coffee, and soylent green.

We try to limit our use of disposable items (paper towels, plastic bags, etc.) and we re-use, recycle, or compost everything else as often as possible. Almost all of our travel happens via foot, bike, or public transportation. We don’t machine dry our clothes, we eat food that is locally sourced and organic as much as possible, we don’t leave the water running while we brush our teeth, and yes—if it’s yellow we let it mellow.