In Graphics Gone Green, subtitled Ways to Go Green Without Losing Your Shirt, authors Rita Amlade and Erica Aitken have built more than the usual manual for greening your design business … although it is an impressively useful guide to the latter. True to their convictions, the authors offer the physical book as both a print on demand document and in jump drive form. If that’s not green enough, the book can also be downloaded as a fully interactive PDF.
Amladi says their approach was “to walk the talk and not just claim to be green.” We talked with her about the book, the process of creating for multiple platforms and the choices that go into a green printing project in the 21st century.
Q: How did you structure the book?
Rather than risk overwhelming readers with a mass of information, we structured the book around a day in the life of a designer who’s putting her practice on the path to sustainability. It starts with getting to the studio, where we offer nuts and bolts. For most of us, the first thing we do in the studio is get online. We ask, “Is it fair to say the internet has no carbon footprint?” The answer is no, and we explore ways to use the web for researching sustainably.
In the following chapters we work our way into print design — strategies you can use long before you set up your print specs to make sure you’re going with the lowest-impact print solution. Each chapter has case studies that show how leading designers like Michael Hodgson of PhD are innovating with sustainable techniques.
The real insight we want to share is you shouldn’t have to do all of this at the expense of your bottom line. We wanted to show people how they could be sustainable and make a profit not just from their creativity but from the way they work.
Q: Why did you choose print on demand?
It’s no secret that commercial printing by its nature puts pressure on the environment. On-demand printing keeps you from having copies of a book sitting in a warehouse. The services out there — like Blurb — have the ability to print a copy close to where you’re located, and to ship it to you with a minimum of resources devoted to transportation. It’s a very green enterprise no matter how you look at it. And regardless of where it’s printed, your color is going to be the same, which is pretty important to a designer.
Q: How does the interactive version differ from the print version?
We figured that people might not want to experience the interactive version in a linear way, so we pulled out all the stops to use PDF to the utmost of its capabilities in terms of links, streaming content and other features. The e-book is truly designed for online viewing: easy to read, color-coded, hyperlinked cross-references and glossary, relevant external links and resources, video interviews and a visual colophon at the end full of information on how we did it all.
Figuring out the best way to present the content was exciting. But there can be a price to pay for being the first to try certain things. For example, we chose a recycled plastic for the jump drive, but we really don’t know what the longevity of that material is going to be.
Q: What’s been the public reception so far?
We launched in December 2009. In addition to selling it on our own site, we also list it on Scribd.com and Blurb.com. At Scribd, we sell individual chapters, which I think is a model that will be very popular — rather than buy a whole book, you can buy one chapter on a topic you’re interested in.
The Collector’s Edition [the jump drive with hang tag in a custom burlap bag] has been a surprise hit in terms of sales. We originally made this as special gift to contributors to the book, but it proved so popular we decided to make it an additional option.
A graphic designer by training, Rita Amladi (left) has written, consulted and taught classes on Adobe software and topics such as sustainable design, color management, digital capture, digital special effects, and production techniques for print and web-based art. Erica Aitken, also a graphic designer, is the co-founder of Rods and Cones, a color management and digital workflow consulting company.
