How can businesses introduce sustainable design?

As graphic designers, we’re makers — we make tangible, touchable content (marketing collateral, packaging, products) in our physical worlds. Within the past few decades, we’ve also seen an exponential growth in our reliance on digital media, causing a significant, ‘real world’ strain on the planet. It’s complicated, and there’s no black and white answer when it comes to introducing and maintaining sustainable graphic design. All creative practices nowadays have a cross-section in both the zeroes-and-ones and bricks-and-mortar.

We’ve written previously about why businesses need sustainable graphic design. Below, you’ll find some areas to start putting sustainable graphic design ideas into practice.

1. Consider where materials come from.

Be mindful of the environmental impact of printing physical copies of collateral. Does this need to be printed? How is it being sent out / packaged? Most paper isn’t made from virgin materials and has at least some percentage of recycled materials within it — but try to look one step further.

Avoid papers made from wood. Look for newer, more sustainable materials, such as bamboo, hemp, and wheat-based papers. Also, use suppliers that prioritise eco-friendly inks — vegetable-based inks, for example, are a more sustainable alternative to petroleum-based inks. Finally, always check partner certifications. If your suppliers are doing the right thing with a sustainable production line, they’ll be more than happy to satisfy any certification requests with you.

2. Be selective about who you work with.

Be selective in your vendors, suppliers, and even your clients. It’s important to live and breathe these standards — to put your money where your mouth is. Find print and production suppliers that also align with sustainable practices and work towards a client portfolio that equally balances this mentality.

This can even extend into the foods you’re supplying to your team. Avoid products from some of the major polluters, but also try to shop small and local. Even if the product is a fraction more expensive, the footprint alone is significantly reduced.

3. Design for longevity.

Avoid trendy designs that may become outdated and require redesigns and reprints by next Tuesday. Instead, focus on timeless design that remains relevant and visually appealing for longer periods of time. While prototyping and designing products, use standardised materials where possible to allow for reuse at some point in the lifecycle of the product. (Just consider the battle we’ve all had with constantly changing phone charge cables and the e-waste that has been produced with that — more on this below.)

4. Reduce your waste.

Waste is unavoidable — but choosing suppliers where it’s limited and sustainable is a great place to start from. Think outside the box with this, too. Companies like Who Gives A Crap have plastic-free packaging solutions for their toilet paper, paper towels, and tissues (even the tape on their boxes is paper!). So, make sure to stock your office space with everyday items like this.

Disposing of e-waste — electronic waste, including anything with plugs, cords, and electronic components, like televisions, mobile phones, and home appliances — is also a considerable issue today. Batteries, precious metals, and all forms of e-waste is terrible for landfill, not to mention wasteful of finite elements. Check with your local council (and some local retailers) for e-waste drop offs and recycling days in your area.

As designers, we often need to upgrade our tech well before it’s given up the ghost but are past their peak performance for our needs. Before replacing whole devices, see if you can give what you have a second life by upgrading parts, rather than the whole thing. For example, could an upgrade to your RAM, SSDs, and graphics cards add another year or two to the lifespan of your computer? If replacing the whole is unavoidable, consider upselling second-hand devices, trading in, or donating to charities and women’s shelters to give your laptops, phones and tablets a second life. Just because these devices are past peak performance for a professional capacity doesn’t mean they are past functioning for the average joe.

5. Talk with and educate your clients.

Many clients are not aware of the environmental impact of graphic design. Talk to your clients about sustainable design options and help them make informed choices — you could even send them this blog post. Make this a key part of any marketing, branding and identity sessions you arrange with your clients and keep it at the forefront of their minds and your own team’s. That way, it’s a constant conversation people are having, which can lead to unique solutions and meaningful changes, rather than a box that needs ticking towards the end of a campaign.

6. Work from home more.

Embracing hybrid and remote working can have huge impacts on the environment for any team. While tech still needs to be hooked-up to a power source whether at home or in the office, the environmental impact of commuting adds up fast. Every additional day a week working from home is an additional 20% reduction on commuter emissions alone (not to mention the ease of traffic and public transport capacity!).

Next (or first) steps

Choice fatigue can be a real struggle. Don’t feel like a deer in the headlights with all these options — start small. Plan manageable changes, set targets, and form new habits. Much like in life more broadly, once you barely notice the new habit that’s formed, add a new one to your repertoire — whether that’s company policy changes, client offerings, or personal goals.

Each bit makes a difference, but the work never really stops. New creative solutions, from tech to ideas, are always presenting themselves, so keep an eye out for any new things to adopt along the way. Maintaining momentum and always keeping an ear to the ground is key to consistency, and therefore moving towards a sustainable and eco-friendly future for all industries.

At Transform, we’re doing just that: maintaining sustainable practices while keeping an eye out for anything new. If you’d like to chat through your graphic design needs, please get in touch with our team today.