Design and Sustainability: You can't do it if you can't sell it.

Recently, I was contacted by a design student in London who was collecting information on how sustainability can be integrated into traditional design education. As someone who's been practicing sustainable design for some years now, she asked me "what are the resistance points when it comes to adopting sustainable practices?"

Personally, I think that much of the resistance that designers face when it comes to integrating sustainability in their practices has much to do with client management, another thing that tends to be lacking in standard design education. Since adopting sustainable design principles at the zen kitchen a couple of years ago, It's been my experience that many designers are informed about and concerned with sustainability, but they lack the ability to convince their clients that incorporating these principles into their work can be balanced with creating an effective marketing tool. As a result, they're reluctant to bring it up, or to get started with sustainability in the first place.

While it's great that more students are interested in learning about sustainability and it's certainly a valid thing to add to any educational program, all the sustainable ideals in the world mean nothing if the designer can't convince the client of why they should be doing it. So, more than just teaching designers how to work sustainably, it's important to give them the skills to be consultants for their clients/bosses, and not just the girl at the Mac. This is especially important because the skills required to sell sustainability to clients are no different than the skills needed to sell your concept to a client, or convince him that while he may want the logo to be bigger, it won't be as effective as leaving it at a tasteful size. It's all about working *with* your client, rather than *for* her.

When Sustainable Isn't - a Green Marketing Dilemma

David Baker from ReCourses had a great newsletter this month about the ubiquitousness of terms like "sustainability" and "branding" in marketing speak today, and why in order for a business to truly be sustainable, it needs to do more than just employ green practices; it needs to run itself in such a way that your financial health, corporate culture, and all the things that keep a business going aren't being ignored in favor of being seen as "green".

An excerpt:

Acting in more sustainable ways is a very good thing indeed, but if we are not authentic (and aligned internally as we pursue it), the brief moments we get on stage will turn open consumers into skeptical critics. Here are some suggestions about having a deeper impact on the world around you.

First, start internally before you preach externally. Assess and then embrace the true cost of following your conscience and lead by example. It's very popular but entirely too easy to suggest how other people should spend their money. Start with your own.

Second, don't ignore the broader definition of sustainability. Your carbon footprint matters, but I'm not sure it should matter more than running a genuinely "sustainable" business. That would be one that cares about financial health, management culture, work/life boundaries, doing effective work for clients, and even the sustainability of your own role. Taming chaos today by solving the same problems you fixed yesterday doesn't ooze sustainability. The best way I could synthesize this point is as follows: control follows viability, and impact follows control. Be the right sort of firm in order to give you the sort of control that can be wielded on behalf of clients that need it (even if they don't know they need it).

Third, be yourself even if it isn't all that sexy. Generally ignore what others are doing and craft something that's real, authentic, and substantive, so much so that you'll still be energized by it a decade from now. That's the sort of real differentiation that accompanies genuine branding. If you've done it right, the message on your web site can remain virtually unchanged for years and years. That, my friends, is a component of sustainability, and throwing my Venti Latte into the recycling container is more lip service than substance.

It's time to broaden our perspectives and be more balanced and authentic marketing partners who tell the truth, regardless of where it leads. It's time to drop flippant uses of the word branding, and it's time to take a more sustainable approach to sustainability. Seldom have larger businesses embraced a message as significant as this to marketing firms, and whether genuine or not, we have an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation and move from the transactional work we've been doing to the consultative role we've longed for. Just keep in mind that good consultants aren't always popular, but they do have a point of view and they are honest.

The full text is here, but I'm not sure how much longer it'll be up there.

Re-Nourish Interview Part Two: Future Plans

This week, partly because the interview was long and partly because things here at the zen kitchen have been too busy for me to breathe (guess this marketing thing works, huh?), the interview with Eric from Re-Nourish continues. In this second half, Eric talks about the future of the site, as well as how he works his sustainable message into the courses he teaches.

4. What do you hope to achieve with the site as it grows?
Personally, I want to develop more in terms of my exploration of the field and apply that to renourish. I designed the site to be fairly "open source" where the information flows freely in and out. I wasn't ever planning to charge people to get this information, but instead hoped that they would spread the word or "seed" conversations with their peers and clients about sustainable design. This was the metaphor I used to develop the "bur" logo. Burs act as seeds attaching themselves to people and animals and are carried elsewhere to start new again. Just imagine what the world would be like if designers only chose 100% PCW paper tomorrow? That's one of the things I'm hoping to accomplish with renourish.5. What's been your favorite thing about seeing the site grow? What has response been like?

My favorite thing so far is the email I receive from readers. Typically they send me links to explore and also simply just tell me how much they like the site. That makes me feel all fuzzy. I'm glad the word is getting out and hopefully changes are soon to follow.

6. What's been the biggest challenge in maintaining the site's integrity and content?

The biggest challenge hasn't been finding the information. In fact it's all over the place (which of course is great). The difficult part is filtering all the information for the site to keep with my standards. Not every link people send me works for the site. Part of filtering all this content then becomes time. I have many interests (however renourish being up at the top) so it's difficult maintaining that balance. I want the site to be chock full of well organized information, but I'm finding the original quick implementation I did in grad school is quickly not adapting well to the amount of available good content. Renourish is growing faster than expected and may need a change soon. I think I may need help! Anyone willing?

7. You mentioned that you're a design professor at the University of Illinois. How have your green principals played into the work you do with students? Do you include sustainability as part of your coursework?

This is a question I have been asking myself every day. How do you get students excited and disturbed enough about the topic without sounding preachy? How do you make sustainably seem full of opportunity and not limiting? As this is my first term teaching at the University of Illinois I am attempting to begin to answer these questions though lectures and assignments. So far I haven't included sustainability as a topic (that is until my next assignment starting Monday October 23!) but instead have been building the students up to it. I've used the idea of "aware". The projects so far have then slowly opening their eyes to the power of their design work through its impact on society. Next I plan on heightening that sense of awareness to their possible environmental impacts. What I find promising is that many students already are interested in the topic and want an assignment related. I've assigned them to read "Cradle to Cradle" as a basis for the next project and hope discussion ensues. These assignments are really building blocks for me to assign more challenging and exciting sustainable design projects in the future. Thanks for asking me to be a part of your blog. Glad we could make time for this interview.

An Interview With the Eric, Founder of Re-Nourish, part the first

One of my happier recent discoveries was Re-Nourish, a repository for just about every sustainable thing you could ever want to think about, especially as it relates to graphic design . Sites like these are hard to find—so many of them deal exclusively with industrial design, a field that's been looking towards sustainability for years. Eco-friendly print design, while not new, has not started looking really sexy until recently, when the world (or, at least, the US) finally started turning an ear to the green movement. Re-Nourish has listings of green design firms (in which the zen kitchen is, in fact, listed), information on how and why to design green (including safe PANTONE swatch pallettes and paper listings), and notes on other miscellaneous greenery, including a running commentary on environmental news in the articles section. Not long ago, I asked Eric, the founder of Re-Nourish and a design professor at the University of Illinois, a few questions about his reasons for developing this incredible information repository and vision for the future of the site.

note: This is the first part of the interview, as it's a bit long for the blogosphere. Tune in next week for part two!

1. Why did you decide to create Re-Nourish? How did it get started?
Renourish really started back in the autumn of 2003, when I attended the AIGA Power of Design Conference in Vancouver, BC Canada. I heard people like Bruce Mau, Susan Szenasy, Jeff Mendelsohn and Michael Braungart speak. The all spoke about the things that were running through my mind at the time as I questioned my purpose as a designer. I was curious to know how detrimental the paper industry really was and if I could do better. I had recently read "Culture Jam" by Kalle Lasn and "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart and found myself wondering should designers be less consumer related and more citizen focused?
These ruminations led me to the University of Texas at Austin where I decided to purse and MFA in design and social responsibility. I struggled for two years to find a positive relationship between graphic designer and the environment. At times I felt my efforts were in vain and that our society was doomed to fail, consuming everything as it fell. I read voraciously. I spent hours in a nearby coffee shop writing, asking myself questions, and experimenting with projects with limited success. The turning point came when I asked myself these questions: "How can the graphic designer practice more sustainably in a very practical way?" and "What is the medium where the designer can be reached 24/7 at home and at the job?" At first my answer was a sustainably designed paper sketchbook, but found the web more accessible and less wasteful in its construction. Renourish was born. It was two years of research and a hurried 3 weeks of design and implementation to meet my thesis deadlines. Looking back I feel the answer was sitting in front of me a year earlier, but I needed to test my other ideas before accepting I was right all along.
2. What first intrigued you about green design? When did you start applying an eco-friendly focus to your design projects?
I think in reality I got interested in the topic when I was a teenager arguing with my dad about why (as a household) we should recycle. I would constantly pull newspapers, milk jugs and cardboard out of the kitchen trash bin and haul it out to the curb every week. It was a losing battle, but in the end I think that sparked my interest. Later, as a designer I found the direct mail, packaging, and print collateral I spent days/weeks slaving over piled in city trash bins. I wanted to do better. I didn't want my work to end up the way it was. But, it really wasn't until graduate school when I began to apply eco-friendly, sustainable principles to my work. Up until that point I really didn't have the information and techniques to do so.
3. How much research did you put into the Re-Nourish resources? How do you find information to put into the site?
I spent 2003-2006 reading about the environment, design impacts and sustainability. I wrote a number of papers and my thesis on the topics. Along the way the information came from books by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, Daniel Imhoff, William McDonough, treehugger.com, the Sierra Club and literally hundreds of other sources. I also had the pleasure of meeting a number of people who also focused their life on sustainability. They were from different cultures (India, Mexico, England) and brought to my life a different perspective on the topic outside of that here in the USA. I collaborated with a few of them on some eco-friendly projects and used those experiences on renourish.

To learn more about Re-Nourish, visit http://www.re-nourish.com. Tune in next week for part two of the interview, where Eric talks about his vision for the future of the site, and how he works sustainability into the courses he teaches.

New Solar-Powered Trash Compactors in Somerville and Boston

Not too long ago in the Somerville Journal, I came across an article about the BigBelly Trash Compactors that are making an appearance in various spots around Boston and the surrounding areas, including a few that just premiered in Davis Square, about a 20-minute walk from the zen kitchen. The compactors, created by Needham, MA-based Seahorse Power, use the sun to compact up to 150 gallons of trash, compared to the 40-50 gallons that the old bins would hold. This means that DPW staff only has to empty the bins once a day, which stands to save the city a ton of money in transportation and labor costs (the old bins had to be emptied up to eight times per day), not to mention the fact it should result in a bit less traffic annoyance on Elm Street, which anyone who's been driving through there can attest is a VERY good thing. Plus, it saves fuel and doesn't require energy from the grid to power it, which means significant environmental benefits as well. How can you go wrong?

When I was looking for more info on the subject, however, I came across this Treehugger post that makes a good point: while the environmental savings provided by these compactors is surely a great step forward, why aren't there recycling bins next to them? A good portion of the trash going into these BigBellies can be recycled; why don't we use some of these savings to start a recycling program as well? I've seen recycling bins in Porter and Harvard Square; it might be different towns (Cambridge vs. Somerville), but it shouldn't be that hard to get a decent recycling program organized.

Of course, it's too early to see what's going to come of this new environmental effort on the part of my fair city; perhaps it's already in the works and they're just waiting for the new budget year to get a recycling program started. We'll see. But at least we're making some strides forward, even if the folks at Treehugger don't think it's enough.

Designers Unite! Another Designer Goes Green

One of the things that's been making me smile of late is the new wave of designers who have decided to make green considerations part of their practice - environmental concerns have been a consideration in product design for quite some time, but in the world of printed goodness, eco-concerns weren't really talked about as much - with the exception of a select few places where you could find the goods on green design.

But lately, I've been seeing a host of terrific writing from other designers about their committment to going green, including this post I discovered on the HOW Design Forum from Holly Castles, an illustrator from Canada (who has REALLY CUTE work, by the way - it reminds me of fairy tales), where she discusses 60+ ways to make your studio and your design work more eco-friendly. I was pleased to find that I was already doing a couple of the things she suggests (such as using shopping bags for trash instead of buying trash bags and using natural light whenever possible instead of turning on the lights in my office), and I learned a few great tips as well.

This newfound excitement for sustainability makes me happy - when I first decided to make eco-friendly graphic design one of the focuses of my studio, I worried that I would be limiting myself by having to be extra choosy about the stuff I took on; and so far, I've been getting great clients, and doing the work that I want to do, the way I want to do it. And seeing other designers moving towards greener practices gives me hope that maybe we can make a difference. After all, we are the ones who create all this paper in the service of our clients. If we don't do something, who will?

Greening the Office: Paperless Time Management

Every day, I thank whatever gods there be for the whiteboard that sits next to me in the office. I have two of them: one larger metal one that doubles as a magnet board and another clear square one that's held to the top of it by magnets. Since I've started getting busier (almost TOO busy in fact; I guess this marketing stuff is working for me!), I have ended up using it every day to keep track of what I need to do.

Here's the thing: when you're busy, the to-do list is your friend. Your Very Good Friend. Lists of any kind, really, are your friend, because you are always getting information that you can't deal with right away. But one of the things that always kind of irritates me is the paper generated by my various lists—between my personal journal, to-do lists, quick notes to myself, business journals, etc. I must have been going through about a few dozen extra pieces of paper a month. Not that much when you think of it in terms of all the paper ever, but still—such things add up. And, adding to the craziness, having a bunch of little pieces of paper floating around is really not that fun for someone who isn't naturally hyper-organized.

So, in the interest of saving a bit of paper, and keeping things in one place, I developed my new system. Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) goes into my iCal, along with categories for each thing I've got to do that day. The smaller whiteboard is for the current day's tasks, and the area underneath it is for a bit of advance planning—I'll put the activities for the next two days there. The current day's appointments with times go at the top of the smaller white board, with all the activities that need to be done that day but don't have a specific time frame are listed underneath. As tasks are completed, they get erased off the board. As the day finishes, the smaller board is erased and the next day's appointments and tasks are listed on the smaller board.

Doing things this way, I've managed to keep my head above water during an insanely busy time, and I get to remind myself that I am, in fact, actually productive—I literally erase parts of the pile as I go.

Green living: Know your inputs and outputs

This Tuesday at the Boston Women’s Network monthly dinner, I had the privilege of hearing Robin Chase, co-founder of ZipCar and currently with Meadow Networks, tell the story of ZipCar’s success and offer suggestions on how to start and run a business based on a commitment to social responsibility.

For those who don’t know ZipCar, it’s car rental service, available in five major metropolitan areas throughout the US, that allows members to rent cars parked in a number of easily-accessed spots throughout the city for only as long as they need them. Rates are billed either hourly or daily depending on usage, and you can rent a car easily through the website and walk to a spot within 5-10 minutes from wherever you happen to be. You hold your membership card up to the windshield, the car unlocks and the ignition engages (wirelessly and keylessly), and you’re on your way. You just park the car back in the same spot you picked it up in, and the car will send the trip data back to ZipCar with the number of hours you used it for billing. Since its founding in about 2000, ZipCar has grown to about 2,000 cars in 5 major cities, and about 20 members on average end up using each car—which means 19 fewer parking spaces needed, 19 fewer cars on the road, and huge cost savings for the members, not to mention the environmental savings.

Among other inspirational tips Robin shared with the group, the tip that resonated with me the most was this: be aware of your inputs and outputs. When you make a business decision, what are you consuming? What are you putting back out there? One of the examples that Robin mentioned was that she refused to buy disposable cups/plates/silverware/etc. for the ZipCar office—if people wanted to have coffee or tea, they would have to bring their own mugs, and the same with dishes. She also had two printers in the office—one with used paper and one with new. Anything that was printed for in-house use was printed on the used paper—information for customers would be printed on the new paper.
Hearing Robin speak about the ways that she made the ZipCar office greener got me thinking about my own inputs and outputs, how I’m trying to lessen the environmental impact of the zen kitchen’s daily operation, and how I can improve on what I’m doing and make the office even greener. Here are a few of the things on my list of outputs:

• I always keep recycled paper in the office printer, and put one-sided waste paper in the tray when I’m finished with the document.


• I’ve instituted a primarily PDF-based workflow in the office, sending customers digital proofs instead of printing them, which saves significant amounts of paper.


• Since it’s primarily a home office, I don’t use disposable anything, and I use cotton towels and sponges for cleaning instead of paper towels.


• I don’t leave water running when I’m washing my hands, brushing my teeth, or doing dishes.


• I also try to be very conscientious about recycling, and I use shopping bags to throw away trash instead of buying new plastic bags.


• Since I moved to Somerville and opened the zen kitchen, I’ve rarely had to drive—most of my work has been in the office, and even when I have to go onsite for a client or meeting, I can often take the T instead of driving.


• I do almost all marketing for the studio on the Web, which means that there's much less paper to be thrown away.

While I definitely think these are good outputs, there are definitely a few places where I can improve:

• On the days when I do have to leave the office for work, I have a tendency to eat out. A LOT. This means disposable dishes and silverware. It also means I’m not eating as healthy as I should be.


• I have a tendency to keep too much, and convince myself that I need things I don’t. That means I end up buying things I don’t really need more often than not, and those things, once I’ve realized I don’t need them anymore, usually end up getting thrown away or donated.


• While I don’t drive my car that often, I’m not always as mindful about maintenance as I should be. I could improve my mileage vastly if I got a tuneup.

So it looks like, while so far I’ve been doing pretty good, there’s still room to make the zen kitchen even greener—remembering to bring a travel mug with me, for example, when I feel like grabbing an iced tea, or remembering to bring reusable bags when I go shopping. After all, even using them as trash bags, with the amount I cook I still have them piled up in the bag holder!

What do you put out there? What do you take in?

Conversations on Green Design: Getting Started

Well, it seems that I've happily reached that point in my career where other designers are coming to me asking for advice. Although I get my fair share of the "do you have advice for a new designer looking to get work in this field" questions, the larger portion of questions/fan mail (yes, one person actually called it fan mail) I've received concern how to get into green design, and how they can work with their clients and printers to make their jobs more sustainable.

Recently, I got a comment on one of my blogs from Kerri McHale, a designer in California whose site just makes me think of running through a field picking dandelions when I was six. It makes me smile. Her work is quite lovely as well. Kerri and I have chatted briefly on a couple of design communities I frequent through this particular blog, and she popped over to ask me a few questions:

I've followed you over from the graphic design community, as you've always been so helpful with very well thought out answers, then I noticed on your website that you focus on sustainable and green design practices. You also seem to have developed a very successful business for yourself. I have a question about all that... if you don't mind taking the time to answer.

My whole career I've been working as a full time employee for businesses, and I will be for a while to come (read: Bay Area, CA mortgage squeeze-- no room for the beginning draught of a full time freelance business)... but I plan to begin developing a client base to start up a freelance business, eventually going full time once I move away from California. I'd like to not only implement sustainable design practices, but also, if I have a large enough client base to choose, focus on design and marketing from businesses in sustainable industries.

So my questions for you mostly pertain to when you were starting out:
Did you, from the very start, employ green practices?
Did you (and do you) only employ green practices, or do you also use standard practices depending on the client?
Did you focus only on a certain niche of clients when you first starting developing a client base?

This is my biggest conundrum when I think about a business model, because, starting out, I imagine that I'd lose a lot of valuable clients who don't want to pay more money for sustainability's sake. Then again, if I practice these standards on a case-by-case basis, there's no credibility there, is there?

Incidentally, have you found that practicing green/sustainable design is that much more expensive for the client?

Sheesh, I might as well be conducting an interview!
This is a lot to answer, so I'll understand if you take a pass! But thanks in advance nonetheless! ;-)

After some thought, I offered this:

hey there,

I'm glad you appreciate the work I've been doing—it's a great inspiration to keep going when I hear props coming from others in my line of work.

In response to your questions, I had always thought about green practices and done my best to employ them to my limited knowledge on every freelance project I did—with my "day jobs," it wasn't always an option. But I have long been a fan and avid supporter of recycled paper, and from the very first project I was fighting to use it in every job I had some control over the printing on. After I started my studio and started searching around for a focus, my thoughts turned to green design, and it just clicked. I got in touch with a woman I knew in Providence who had a design firm that employed green practices, and asked her for advice. She happily gave me a bunch of resources to check out, and I started doing the research.

To the best of my ability, I employ exclusively green practices. Occasionally you get the odd job—a business card here or there where the client already has a printer lined up and it's just a quick one-off job from someone you're helping out for a moment or two—and you end up not being able to have the control you need to be green; but it's been my experience that most clients will listen if you explain to them why, and that you can still have beautiful design that's sustainable and reasonably priced.

As for a niche, I don't know that I focus on one particular niche, although some would say I do. I talk about green design wherever I have the chance, online and off, and I've noticed that the clients who come to me lately genuinely care about green design and want to apply sustainable principles to their jobs. What it comes down to is that, as the designer, you have the control. If you make it clear that this is how you work, the client either respects that or doesn't. If they don't, you probably shouldn't be working with them.

As far as pricing goes, I've found the majority of pricing to be competitive on going green vs. not going green. The trick is doing the research and figuring out what's entailed. The basics (veggie ink and 100% postconsumer paper) isn't going to up your cost that much (although some would claim that it's expensive compared to places like Vistaprint, but frankly, that site doesn't even factor into the equation on the vast majority of my work), but ink-saving techniques like die-cutting and embossing can. It's really up to the specifics of the job, and where you want to go with a specific piece.

What I'd suggest is to do some research—start with Partners in Design's Eco Strategies and Celery Design's Eco Guide to Paper, and spend some time on Re-Nourish. Then start talking to your clients about it. Get price quotes on recycled vs. non-recycled. Most high-end papers have at least one recycled option, and it's usually similar in price to the other sheets in the line. Make them see that it will make barely a blip on their bottom line, and the good karma they get from going green on their materials will pay for it in spades and accolades. Then make the switch and start pitching yourself as green.

Getting Rid of the Clutter? Don’t Throw it Out – Throw it to Throwplace.

While poking around re-nourish the other day, I noticed a write-up on Throwplace, a site designed to keep folks’ clutter from going into the landfill by allowing registered users to offer up their pre-loved (read: discarded) belongings to other folks willing to take it off their hands. A description from the Re-Nourish site gives an idea of how it works:

Throwplace.com encourages donors to list functional items in good condition in the Charity section. Goods with reuse or recycling potential can be listed in the Business section, along with items needing refurbishing or parts for recycling. Items of low value but with creative use potential like bottlecaps, corks, or even egg crates can be listed in the Up-For-Grabs section.

Items not claimed by Charities within 90 days will roll into the Business section, and from Business to Up-For-Grabs. After a Throw has rolled into the Up-For-Grabs section it will automatically be deleted if it has not been given away in 120 days.

What makes me happy about this concept is two things: one, of course, it keeps otherwise perfectly serviceable stuff out of landfills and offers it up to good causes; and two, it gives small business owners and non-profits the ability to furnish their offices cheaply (all items are free to throw, although the site charges a small subscription fee if you want to take things) without the inevitable waste that comes along with buying new furniture.

A quick browse of the site’s offerings doesn’t show a ton of listings; however, the site is still new, and the concept is brilliant. I’ll definitely be throwing some of my stuff there (and potentially looking to take) as I set up my new digs in September.

Greening the Office: PDF Design Workflow

One of the things I love about having my own office is that I get to make my own decisions – as the boss, I get to decide what kind of paper to put in the printer, how often to print things, what kind of notebooks to buy, and a whole host of other things that I just don’t get the opportunity to do as someone who isn’t running the show. When I started the zen kitchen, one of my primary objectives was to be as green as possible, not only in the materials I created for my clients, but in my in-studio practices as well.

Before I opened the studio, I spent about six years working in print shops, corporate art departments, and privately at home, and one of the things that always frustrated me about the places I worked outside of my home office was the amount of waste created in the traditional design workflow. In almost every art department I worked in, the average layout required printing every page of the layout, usually on a larger size sheet (11 by 17 or 12 by 18), to be passed around the office for approval. Inevitably there would be anywhere from 3 to 12 rounds of edits, and each round of edits required the printing of a new proof. The end result of this was that the average job jacket contained anywhere from 12 to 50 sheets of paper by the end of a job; and generally speaking, most of the paper used had either no recycled content or the bare minimum recycled content, and while many of the offices had excellent recycling programs, the sheer amount of waste created was disconcerting.

With the work I’ve done in my home studio and for the zen kitchen, I’ve instituted a digital PDF workflow – meaning that, after I’ve finished a draft for a client, I export the piece as a PDF and send it to the client for review via e-mail. This process has worked very well for a variety of reasons:

• It saves time – many of my clients are ½ hour or more away, and sending them a PDF means I don’t have to deliver proofs in person. It’s also much quicker than working up a comp and mailing it to a client.
• It saves money – by eliminating shipping and printing costs for proofs, I’m able to work more efficiently and keep overhead reasonable.
• It saves paper and ink – by not printing out proofs after every round of revisions, I manage to save a tree or two, as well as avoid a trip to Staples.
• It saves space on my workshelves and in my filing cabinets.

I began to fully realize the beauty of the digital workflow I’ve created in the studio while I was working with Virgin Life Care on a big layout project. The project was a 75-page manual that was being cut to about 50 pages with edits on those pages – much more reasonable, but still quite the feat. My contact at the company had the full version of Acrobat, which (because it’s brilliant) allowed him to make comments and requests for edits right in the PDF document – which meant that, through three rounds of changes, I was able to not only get his edits in a timely manner and make the edits quickly, I was able to do it all without printing a single sheet of paper.

PDF workflows can be tough to implement – in some, more established, art departments, it can be tough to get people used to dealing with Acrobat’s commenting features, as well as getting them out of the habit of requiring paper proofs. In addition, it can be tough to accurately judge things like size, die-cuts, etc. in PDF form – for things I’m using die-cutting for, or that require special assembly, I always try to do at least one paper comp, fully assembled and cut out. But once it’s in use, a PDF workflow can add tremendous benefits to both office efficiency and a company’s bottom line.

Sustainability challenge: Designing for the right size sheet

One of the more interesting challenges to being sustainable comes not just from choosing the right papers and inks for each job, but from making the most efficient use of the press sheet (a term which here means "sheets of paper used for said print job"). Paper for offset press comes in a variety of sizes beyond the traditional 8.5 by 11 and 11 by 17 (or A4 and A3 used in Europe—I think those are the names, anyway.), and it's often worth a conversation with the printer prior designing a job to determine the best use of the sheet.

This principle ended up coming into sharp focus while I was creating the brochure for 5-Trees, an environmental compliance documentation company in Burlington MA. The brochure, which highlights the company's expertise in education and compliance documentation for RoHS and other key environmental initiatives, needed a look that carried through the global, all-encompassing theme of their existing branding and bring something more to the table than a typical brochure, while still sending an eco-friendly message. Originally, I had concepted this as an 12 by 8 brochure, which folded to 4 by 8 with a die cut on the front flap. "What the heck are you talking about?" you might say—but trust me, it was nice. A triumph of a piece.

Until the job went to press, and I discovered that the printer had quoted the job on an entirely different print size than what I had specified originally (and referenced an earlier quote for). In the proof stage, I got a call from my print rep mentioning this fact, and telling me that to do the job at the size I needed, they had to buy an entirely different sheet of paper, and not only would that jack up the price $400, it would end up wasting a ton of paper in the long run, as the sheets wouldn't cut quite right for this job.

The annoying part of this is that I didn't learn any of this ahead of time. The not-as-annoying part of it is that I only had to reduce the overall length of the piece by 3/4 of an inch to get it down to a doable size on the original sheet they were using, a change which was barely perceptable to the client, and actually made the brochure more elegant.

The other good news is that for my next big gig, the invitation for the Human Rights Campaign's Annual New England Dinner, I talked to the printer before I even started CONCEPTING the piece, so we were able to find the perfect balance of efficient paper use and aesthetics before I spent time designing the piece.

Back from Green Marketing Seminar with Precision Web Marketing

Well, after a long and particularly insane ride home (I swear that I93 exists to make drivers REALLY HATE their cars) I have returned from co-presenting a seminar on Green Marketing with Michelle Girasole of Precision Web Marketing in Providence. The group was intimate, but attentive, and I had a great time chatting with them about more eco-friendly ways to promote their businesses, including green printing, blogging, and e-mail newsletters. I look forward to having the chance to do that again—public speaking is one of those things I truly love to do, and it gives me a chance to use that theatre training I never thought I'd use again!

After the seminar, I stopped by to visit a good friend and took a trip to Pawtuxet Village in Cranston—my old hangout, before I moved up to Somerville a year ago. It's a beautiful, quaint little village right by the Pawtuxet River, just up the street from where I grew up. While I was there, I stopped by Little Falls Bakery and Café (please don't pay too much attention to the aesthetics of their site—ack!) to pick up a couple of their Multigrain scones, which are one of my absolute favorite breakfast items ever, and one of the things I miss most about living in Cranston. Little Falls does it right—they're an institution in Pawtuxet Village, and I think that's mainly because they don't need to market themselves all that heavily to people—they're in a very convenient location just at the beginning of the main part of the Village, they provide great food (all their scones are amazing, and their low-carb bagels are good enough to convince even someone who loves carbs to give them a try. The coffee rocks too) and great, friendly service, and they try to give back to their community. Little by little, word of mouth leads to more customers, and those customers tell other people, and so on and so forth.

The fact is that, while all the other things that business owners do to market themselves is good and valuable, there is so much to be said about just being good at what you do, and about being good to other people. When you do something nice for someone, whether it's helping them with an issue they've been having, sending them a helpful article about something they'd be interested in, or even just smiling and saying hello—they remember that, and they remember you. And getting people to remember you is half of successful marketing. So, as you go along in your workday, take some time to be good to people—it'll always pay you back.

Reason #564 to love my iPod

My iPod is a wonderful thing. Aside from the fact that it has all my chick rock, Beatles records and yoga music on it (among others), my favorite feature is this: it saves me paper.

That's right—in its brief life as mine, my iPod has prevented me from printing out countless sheets of directions to various places, text from websites, and it's occasionally served as a replacement jump drive in times of need.

For those who might not be aware of this feature, those of us who are on Mac OSX already know that the iPod is set up to sync with iCal and your Address book. What I do is cut and paste directions to wherever it is I have to go from Yahoo Maps into the "notes" section of the iCal event (it's important to note that when you do this, you have to manually type in the R's and L's that normally appear in circles in the Yahoo directions, as they don't show up in your iCal text). In doing this, I have managed to save about a half a ream of paper thus far that would normally be used to print directions from Yahoo Maps.

Another handy little feature I've found is that you can also move text-only files over into the "Notes" section of your iPod and read them on the screen. This works well if you have BBEdit Lite —I've found that Text Edit leaves funky characters in the text.