Design for a better life
Print media can improve its green profile by designing with one eye on the impact that production will have on the environment. Andy Knaggs talks to a design agency at the forefront of sustainable design.
The magazine creative review – a bible for designers – ran a whole issue devoted to “sustainable design” in April this year. It’s a worthy editorial stance to take but ideally, ponders Tara Hanrahan of the design agency thomas.matthews, every monthly issue of Creative Review would be about the subject, not just the occasional one. Sustainable design should just be what everybody does, without thinking about it. We haven’t got to that stage yet though.
Hanrahan is associate director at the small London agency – an agency that unusually for such a company has a manifesto incorporating the words “saving the planet” alongside more familiar design buzz phrases such as “design for communication” and “smart concepts”.
The reason why such an ambitious objective is included in the company manifesto is that thomas.matthews is serious, way beyond the point of lip service, about its belief in and its application of sustainable design. A handy, pocket-sized book entitled thomas.matthews: ten ways design can fight climate change, is just the most obvious example of this. The agency also features as a case study on the Lovely as a Tree website.
Hanrahan explains the company’s commitment: “We have a background passion for this kind of thing. The manifesto is the ethos of our work. First and foremost we do good design, but we do it sustainably. Often people think that you have to make compromises between good design and being sustainable – we’re endeavouring to show that you can do both.”
That means avoiding using effects like foil blocking, metallic inks and PVCs wherever possible. It means insisting on recycled or sustainably-managed papers and vegetable inks. It means communicating with printers and paper suppliers about new materials and techniques that can reduce the impact of a print job on the environment. It means thinking creatively about ways to re-use materials instead of throwing them away.
So in many ways, it is a state of mind. Does a piece really need to be printed in the first place, might be the first question a design agency should ask itself when it receives a brief.
“Sometimes the easiest way to show what we mean by sustainable design, is to show by example, and that’s why we produced the book. It was a simple way to communicate complex issues and processes. It would be naïve to think we are the only people doing this but we have been doing it for ten years, and that affords us a depth of knowledge,” says Hanrahan.
Suppliers have played a very important role in thomas. matthews going through this education. It has very close relationships with printers such as Calverts, the co-operative printer just across the Thames from thomas.matthews, which allow for frank conversations about things like wastage on press and how that can be reduced through changing print formats to optimise the use of the sheet.
The compilation of a vast sustainable design knowledge bank also comes from putting ideas into practice for clients. Thomas.matthews worked on a project for the Earth Centre in Doncaster in the late 1990s, utilising locally sourced print suppliers and re-using plastic bags collected from a local shopping centre, which were melted down and transformed into colourful covers.
Hanrahan continues: “The Earth Centre really pushed us into a lot of research into what materials are out there. That was a really good base from which to grow our knowledge, and it was the project that was our biggest learning curve.”
While thomas.matthews and any other environmentallyconscious agencies, have had to compile this knowledge from scratch because so little was available and was not really taught in design training, Hanrahan believes that young print designers should now be being armed with this information during their training. Hanrahan and her colleagues lecture at design colleges and speak to the students so she knows that this is starting to happen.
“When I was a student I did not know about the print process,” she says. “Maybe we need to learn more about that at University. If you know what those challenges and opportunities are it informs the design. If you know what size the press sheet is you work from that. If you know about the print process it informs the way you think about all projects.”
Clients have to be educated also. Hanrahan acknowledges that recycled papers have “come on in leaps and bounds”, but she says there is still an important challenge for environmentally aware designers to convince clients that recycled paper does not mean they get a lesser product. She adds that the cost of recycled papers is also now less of an issue.
Information about sustainable design should be shared, filtering through college courses, websites and forums, and the agency is interested in developing a knowledge sharing network of like-minded people from a variety of disciplines to discuss ideas, collaborate and inspire better sustainable practice.
For thomas.matthews, the next step on its environmental path is “carbon positive”, which continues the theme of knowledge sharing. Hanrahan explains the studio is carbon neutral through such measures as using a green energy supplier, reducing energy consumption, recycling where possible, and using green office supplies.
Its work is always ethically considered, with strenuous efforts to ensure each project has minimal environmental impact; where possible items are designed for re-use, specified with sustainable materials and locally sourced. Carbon is reduced to a minimum and what is left is offset.
“But becoming carbon positive is about going beyond thomas.matthews, it is about informing and changing the behaviour of our suppliers, associates and clients. We are working with Best Foot Forward and our main suppliers in the move towards setting up calculations for a ‘carbon tax’ that we can pass on to our clients so that they can understand how much carbon their project is creating. This ‘tax’ charged will represent the cost of the remaining carbon and will be given to a reputable carbon offsetting organisation to invest in renewable and energy efficient power programmes in the developing world.”
Clients, in a business environment that scrutinises the effect that organisations have on the world around like never before, might increasingly be happy to bear such a tax, weighing it up against the wider cost of being held up as an example of poor environmental practice.
The sustainable design message is starting to get through, Hanrahan feels, especially given the strong following wind provided today by the prevalence of climate change as an issue.
“The younger generation in particular are hungry to know more about this because it really will affect them,” she says. “We would hope that in a few years sustainable design just becomes the norm. In the meantime, we are constantly pushing our suppliers and trying new things, as we feel there’s definitely a lot further to go.
“It’s about sharing knowledge; being creative and constantly questioning what you are doing so that you might be able to do it better still.”
thomas.matthews: ten sustainable design tips
- Re-thinking: step back and think; find a different way to communicate client needs
- Re-using: achieve more with less; re-use to create new
- Use friendly materials: use recycled products; ask suppliers to stock eco-friendly materials; avoid specifying harmful materials
- Save energy: use sustainable or renewable energy sources; design to minimise energy demand
- Share new ideas: collaborate whenever you can with new technology and materials
- Design to last: specify the right material to avoid the need for replacement; see the big picture through ‘lifetime costing’
- Stay local, buy ethical: avoid the pollution of lengthy transport by sourcing local supply; if you can’t buy locally, buy ethically
- Support what you believe: work for clients with ethical agendas that fit yours
- Inspire: create design that is beautiful, clever and sustainable all at once to encourage others to follow suit
- Save money: thinking sustainably can save resources and money, even if it means thinking harder and more creatively