Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Sustainable Design

So currently I am taking an art theory class called Design, Technology and Society. It's very controversial and I need to come up with a topic for my research essay. Problem is I could go so many ways with this. However, I am very interested in sustainable design and am looking into some practices that help the environment.

These include a font named Ecofont. It’s a free, multi-platform font based on Verdana, that’s full of holes — the Swiss cheese of type — to save around 20% of the toner you’re currently wasting. Ecofont isn’t Swiss, though, it’s Dutch; brought to you as a public service by the Utrecht-based design firm, SPRANQ.

There is a company in the UK named Curb that specialises in using natural materials to build wareness for clients products and services.

Another idea is look for printers who do waterless printing. The waterless process eliminates the fountain solution used in offset lithography, and instead of conventional metal printing plates, you use a silicone rubber plate and special ink. It’s a faster, cleaner process that reduces the amount of paper required for make-ready and thus, uses less energy.

And this is one I actually do. Try not to design so that the media needs bleed or design the item so that it is smaller than standard paper sizes and only needs a small amount of bleed.

And last but not least. Today I purchased my web domain and a year's hosting. www.sammiehall.com Content coming soon!