Here is a selection of resources we’ve collected to help communication designers reduce the environmental impact of their work.
Considering the visual impact of a piece of communication alongside its environmental footprint can often seem difficult. Though with the right tools and knowledge, it becomes much easier to make beautiful outcomes that don’t cost the planet.
‘A Better Source’ is a website which has a variety of articles and resources which help designers understand the factors affecting their work, and the importance of the design stage in a project.
‘The Graphical Tree Beginners Guide’ provides a summary of key technical considerations when producing display graphics.
‘The Material District’ is an online materials library, allowing designers to find new materials and learn about their technical and environmental specifications.
‘The Print Design Checklists’ are a pair of questionnaires used by Thomas.Matthews to help our designers decide which production methods and printers to use.
– Thomas.Matthews
Design in reuse and/or material recovery from the outset. Properly understanding and interrogating how your outcome will be dismantled or re-used, will help you make more conscious design decisions about its production.
Try to optimise your design output for today’s systems in the markets you work in. Check the materials you use have a widespread infrastructure for recovery. 100% recyclable doesn’t mean anything if there isn’t a market for the material and an infrastructure available to recover it.
Don’t over complicate where it is not necessary. Additional widgets, glued on appendages, multi-coloured laminated layers. All these add complication to the recovery process and result in more work needed to clean and separate, and less value recovered material. Design with as pure a bill of materials as you can.