Sustainable graphic design for print

Sustainable graphic design is design that accounts for what happens to the piece after it leaves the studio. In print, that comes down to a short list of decisions: how many you print, what size you trim to, what stock you specify, how much ink you lay down, what you put on top of the ink, and how the piece is bound. Getting those decisions right accounts for most of a printed piece's environmental impact.

We are Eco Friendly Printer. Greg Barber started the company in 1990 and it is still family run. We print on 100 percent recycled, FSC certified stock with soy based inks and chlorine free bleaching, which means we see the results of these decisions on press every week. Below is what changes the outcome, roughly in order of how much difference it makes.

Print run size

Quantity has more effect than any other variable. A run of five thousand brochures on recycled stock, of which three thousand are thrown out when the pricing changes, uses more paper than two thousand on virgin stock that all get used.

Design for the run you need. If the piece contains anything that will date, such as a price, a phone number or an event year, either leave it out and point to a web page, or accept a smaller run and reprint. If you are mailing, clean the list before you set the quantity. A lower price per unit does not save money if many of the pieces are never read.

Trim size and page count

Paper comes in sheets, and a press prints a fixed number of pieces per sheet. A trim size that fits the parent sheet cleanly wastes very little. A trim size chosen because it looked good in the layout program can leave a strip of unused paper on every sheet across the entire run.

The same applies to page count. Bound work runs in signatures, usually multiples of four or eight pages. A book that comes in at 129 pages carries blank pages you paid to print and ship. Ask your printer for the efficient sizes and counts before the layout is locked. This is a short conversation, and it can noticeably reduce the paper cost.

Stock

Specify the paper by name rather than by a general description. The things worth putting in the specification are the post consumer waste content, the FSC certification, and how it was bleached. Recycled stock at 100 percent post consumer, processed without chlorine, is the strongest of these, and it is what we use by default.

Weight matters for the feel of a piece far more than any finish. A heavier uncoated sheet feels more substantial. A lighter sheet with a glossy laminate feels cheaper and cannot be recycled. If you are choosing between adding a coating and moving up a weight, move up the weight.

Design for the surface you picked. Uncoated and recycled sheets absorb ink, so colors print softer and slightly warmer than they look on a calibrated screen. Photographic detail and very fine reversed out type both suffer. Muted palettes, generous type and simple shapes suit the stock better. If you want to be sure before you commit, ask about paper samples when you request a quote, since proofing a color on the actual sheet is the only reliable test. You can read about our stocks on the paper samples page.

Ink coverage and color

Less ink on the page means less material used and easier de-inking when the paper is recycled. It also usually looks better.

In practice, that means you should avoid full bleed solid dark backgrounds where a lighter background would work; set body text in a typeface with normal rather than heavy strokes; use one or two spot colors instead of a four color build where the design allows, which also holds brand color more accurately; and reserve heavy coverage for the one element that most needs it.

Avoid metallic and fluorescent inks where recyclability matters, because their pigments complicate paper recovery. Standard soy based inks handle almost everything else.

Coatings, laminates and finishing

Finishing is where a sustainable design most often loses its environmental benefits.

• Laminate bonds plastic film to paper. It makes the piece durable and takes it out of the paper recycling stream. Specify it only when the piece has to survive water or heavy handling, such as a menu.
• UV coating and heavy varnish complicate recycling to add a shine that a heavier uncoated sheet does not need.
• Blind embossing and debossing create texture with a die and pressure alone, with no ink or film added. On heavy recycled stock, this is one of the best value finishes available.
• Die cutting changes the shape without changing the material, though very fine detail can chip on fibrous recycled sheets.

On binding, saddle stitching uses staples that are pulled out easily during recycling and suits short documents. PUR binding uses less adhesive than standard perfect binding and holds up better, so the book needs replacing less often. Thread sewn binding avoids glue entirely and costs more.

Print or screen

Neither is automatically the greener choice. Print consumes paper, ink and transport. Digital consumes energy for hosting, transmission and the device it is read on, continuously, for as long as the file exists.

The useful question is what the piece has to do. Something handed over in person, read in a place with no signal, kept on a counter, or meant to feel substantial belongs in print. Something that changes often, needs to be searched, or goes to a large scattered audience belongs on screen. Most projects are a mix: a smaller printed piece that does the physical job, with a QR code carrying the detail that would otherwise need extra pages.

Files, proofs and reprints

A reprint is the worst environmental outcome in print, so anything that reduces the chance of one is also a sustainability measure.

Supply a print ready PDF with fonts embedded, images at adequate resolution, artwork built to the trim size, and bleed on anything that runs off the edge. Proof the text before the file goes to press, not after. Ask for a proof on the actual stock for any job where color accuracy matters, because colors on a screen will not match colors on recycled uncoated paper exactly.

Working with your printer

Bring the printer in while the design can still change. A printer can tell you which trim sizes fit the sheet, which stocks hold your color, whether your page count works with the binding, and where a small change removes a whole finishing step. Once the file is approved, those options are closed.

Ask specific questions and expect specific answers: which mill, what post consumer content, what ink, how the paper is bleached, and what happens to the trim waste. A printer should be able to answer all of them. Our own answers are on why eco printing and eco questions.

Bring us a project

Send the artwork, or the sketch and a rough quantity, and we will tell you what the specification does to the cost, the schedule and the paper. Start your order and we will come back with options.