By Eric Benson

Part III: Sustainable printing and the graphic designer

“The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem.” – Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA. (From the book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Penguin Books. 2005.)

It is fairly simple to call a few printers in your local area and find one that gives you the best price on paper and printing and also meets your busy schedule. It’s a job well done as soon as you drop off your CD packed full of files at your chosen printer and take a breather before starting your next big design job. But what if price and deadlines weren’t the only variables that led a designer to choose a printer? What if we paid more attention to the printer’s business practices? Could this improve our overall quality of life? In general, when we design something the idea is to make things better. Whether we are improving the economy (through advertising and sales) or making things easier and simpler to accomplish (via products or better designed instructions/communications), the design intention is to create a catalyst in our society for positive economic growth or social change. (more…)

Sustainable ink and the graphic designer
“Sustainable design gives an authentic value to the consumer.”– Katarina Graffman (Ethnographer)

In the second portion of this continuing essay, I turn my focus to another integral component to the graphic designer’s daily language: ink. Ink was developed, for commercial purposes, by the Chinese thousands of years ago and was constructed of various mixtures of pine soot, lamp oil and animal gelatin. Color was added through combining berries, minerals and a variety of plants/roots. As commercial printing (as we now know it) grew in demand from economic expansion fueled by the Industrial Revolution, the work of Johannes Gutenberg (moveable type printing in 1439) was continued by Friedrich Gottlob Koenig (flatbed cylinder printing press in 1810) and by Heidelberg’s “Tiegel” press (1914) which allowed for printing on a mass production scale. Ink for printing was typically made from burned rosin (pine/plant resin) suspended in linseed and other vegetable oils. This variety of agro-based ink dominated the market until the early 1960s when cheaper and better performing petroleum-based inks were introduced to the printing arena.
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Part I: Sustainable paper and the graphic designer

“There is no business to be done on a dead planet.” – David Brower (Sierra Club Foundation Founder)

We’ve heard a lot lately about global warming and its connected dangers posed to our civilization and current way of life. But what does this mean for the graphic designer? Do we have responsibilities beyond possibly investing in a stylish new bike or replacing a few incandescent light bulbs with some compact fluorescents (CFLs)? In this first installment of a multi-part essay, I’ll focus on why sustainability is important for the future and current success of our craft by looking at the material that the graphic designer has historically yet to be able to live without: paper. (more…)