When Printing, Every Design Choice Matters

By Jonathan Bardelline, GreenerDesign
Published August 21, 2008

Add to iTunes

GreenBiz Radio RSS

The paperless office, or even the paperless business, is a long way away for most companies. But when you need to do printing outside of the typical in-office printing, such as creating materials for conferences or products, there are plenty of ways to use smarter design to reduce materials and enegy as well as ensure that what you've printed can be recycled.

Debra Rizzi from Rizco Design spoke with GreenBiz Radio about good and bad printing options, and Rizco's Beleaf report card, which scores the environmental impact of client projects, rating their design and printing choices.

Jonathan Bardelline: You developed a report card rating the greenness of products, taking into account both your office practices at Rizco and the design and print choices that go into the projects. What decisions in there matter the most?

Debra Rizzi: There is definitely several of them. Looking at the way that our office operates and knowing that in the creative industry that decisions that designers make really affect water, energy and timber from trees that are made into paper.

I would say first of all switching over to green power is definitely a route of the future that you see not only internally at Rizco Design, but with other manufacturers and other corporate suppliers. So currently at Rizco Design we switched over to a 50 percent wind, 50 percent hydro platform, and have seen really great results in being able to play a part with the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership and more recently as the first design firm to join Climate Leaders. We show our commitment to purchasing and investing in green power.

The other thing I would definitely say is recycling, and switching and specifying paper stocks that are either Forest Stewardship Council certified, which is FSC, or have a high level of recycled content. Through our research there was a statistic that was put out by the Environmental Paper Network that listed that 16 million tons of high-grade fiber from offices and printers go into landfills annually that could have been recovered. So we as designers knowing that if we're specifying papers that have a high recycled content or are made through suppliers that are being monitored like they are through the chain of custody with FSC, and then furthermore making sure that they're being recycled. In the big scheme of things that is definitely gonna make a long-term impact.

JB: The report card covers a lot of different options in terms of design and printing choices with different weights given to different issues. How did you determine which issues to give more or less weight to when determining how much of an impact those choices have on the greenness of a project?

DR: We did a lot of research to come up with key components that, first of all, when you're looking at reviewing the way that we approach a design, what are the key items that you think about? And some of those include your colorization, your size, your resources. How do you show your comps or even your initial design directions? What are the printing processes that you're selecting? Is your end product recyclable and are you also advising your clients about the recycling process?

Those were the seven key criteria that we came up with just in the design phase that our designers think about. And also too within that we did a lot of research to see how would making a positive change in one of those areas create a long-term success rate in helping the environment. Secondly, too, with green printing if you look at paper stock for example, we have different layers in there of giving percentages. Something that has a high content, high recycled content gets more of a point value than something that does not.

FSC certified stock is second in line. Treeless paper is also. Looking at those items and seeing what uses the most resources and not just from a fiber content relationship, but also energy and water. You know, you're really trying to eliminate the pressure that we're putting on resources. So within there even looking at green printing, we're looking at the colors, the paper stock, printing processes, FSC certified printers, codings and bindery. And we have applied different percentages based upon worst to best.

And it really creates a grading system so that not only are you grading a project, but in one fell swoop you can actually showcase to your client how many decisions go into a job and what those decisions have and what kind of impact they have on the environment.

JB: Could you give me a few examples from both of the extremes - what are some of the best decisions to make versus what are some of the things that just should be avoided at all costs?

DR: One of the best case studies I can talk about is gang running. We recently finished a project for the

Art Director's Club of New Jersey gang run print

Art Director's Club of New Jersey. We donated our time for their annual awards show. And within that there were four to five pieces that needed to be developed. First being a cover of the awards booklet, a call for entries postcard, an invitation, two other pieces of solicitation. And by planning in advance we were able to print all of those components up on one press form versus doing five individual press forms.

So you see that by gang running and thinking in advance you can size each of your projects accordingly and make sure that you're minimizing the amount of resources that you need. Also too within that thought process we minimized inks and the paper stock that was selected was carbon neutral, 100 percent recycled, FSC certified and Green-e certified as well. So that is a really good case study of things to definitely take into consideration.