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Before you begin
You may be surprised to learn that the key to minimizing the impact that your printing project will have on the environment, (and your budget), is to pay very strict attention to something that takes place long before the point where paper and ink come together.
The graphic design techniques that you, or your graphic designer employ will often be the greatest single determinant of environmental and economic impact when the total cost of the project is finally calculated. Unusual finished sizes, coated papers, heavy ink coverage, bleeds, and other materials and techniques which are very popular among graphic designers, can sometimes double the cost of a printed piece when applied indiscriminately.
Wasted paper and increased press time mean increased cost and delays too. Some of the "magic" that is easy to perform on a computer screen, can become wasteful and expensive when it must be faithfully reproduced with paper and ink. The design complexity of a piece should be appropriate to its purpose. In general, the more complex a design is the more resources will be needed to reproduce it, the more production time it will require and the more it will cost.
An environmentally sensitive designer will carefully consider the purpose and expectations of the target audience of a piece and will begin working closely with the printer during the conceptual design phase of a project in order to keep production complexity and paper waste (as well as turnaround time and cost) to a minimum.
While one might assume that all professional graphics designers are well versed in this important aspect of their trade, many talented designers pay surprisingly little attention to the production portion of their projects beyond specifying recycled paper and verifying that the printer "gets the colors right". Few printers question design elements which may be unnecessarily complex or wasteful, (and expensive), preferring to simply mark up their price to reflect the extra time and materials involved, environmental concerns being low on their list of priorities. The resulting higher price is seldom a concern for the designer since most corporate customers are accustomed to working with relatively large project budgets.
Because environmental concerns are high on EcoGraphics’ list of priorities, and because many of our customers are on tight budgets, we will often suggest design changes that can have a substantial effect on the cost of a printed piece without necessarily diminishing the impact that it will have on its audience. With some educational pieces, this could mean that an organization may be able get its message to a few hundred more potential supporters than it would otherwise have be able to afford to do.
When a great deal of time and artistic effort has already gone into a design, suggestions of this nature are seldom very useful except for future reference. For this reason, we cannot emphasize enough the importance of beginning to work with your printer, (hopefully EcoGraphics), at the conceptual design phase of your project. We may be able to help you save a tree and hundreds of dollars!
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Contact: info@ecographics.com
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