Greening Print Marketing: Ideas for Sustainable Design

When we think of greening print marketing, we often think about the production of printed pieces—the printing process, the consumables, the recycling. But greening print marketing starts much earlier, with the design of the piece itself.

Design Can Change, an initiative designed to help green print marketing from the very earliest design stages, now offers a “Sustainable Design Checklist” to help marketers and designers think through how they can make simple changes that move them forward to a more sustainable future.

Some of the suggestions are obvious, such as moving toward targeted marketing and choosing paper with a high percentage of postconsumer waste. But others may not be so obvious. For example. . .

• Set you specs so that you maximize space on the press sheet
• For visual punch, consider embossing or die cuts instead of additional ink coverage
• Avoid specialty, metallic, or flourescent inks
• Minimize transport and shipping by using local vendors and sourcing local materials
• Using lighter papers
• Spec paper that is processed chlorine free
• Eliminate adhesive in packaging by using alternative binding or tabs
• Avoid labels by printing directly on the packaging surface
• Limit the use of staples
• Keep your mailing list up to date

This checklist has many more ideas that are surprisingly simple, but in the long run, can make a big difference. To obtain the checklist, click through the link on the What They Think “Going Green” blog post.

Like this post? See all my “Greening Print Marketing” posts.

Image courtesy of the Print on Demand Initiative Case Study Archives