Here’s the story of how we did it:

Let’s start with the paper... We know that by switching to a post-consumer recycled stock we can save up to 70% of the embodied energy of a piece of print. But then we thought, what if we use paper that is already sitting in our printer’s warehouse because of an over order? We riffled through their surplus stock and chose some suitable weights and finishes. We didn’t stop there. We asked our printer to use it as ‘make-ready’ (paper that preps the press on a number of jobs). Once it had finished this useful task, we saved it from being discarded.

Now onto the inks... Even with vegetable-based ones there’s a story. They may be low in VOCs (Volatile Organic Chemicals) and less polluting, but there are some serious questions around soy crops causing rainforest deforestation to contend with. Every time a designer asks for a particular spot colour (even for the smallest job) the printer mixes up a tin. That’s a whole litre of ink when you may only require a spoonful. So instead of contributing to this global impact, we spent an afternoon peering into leftover pots (checking them for low barium and copper along the way) to arrive at our new brand palette. But what about the metallics... Aren’t they a big no-no? Well we checked the supplier’s specification and asked some experts about the silver ink and the effect of using big floods of colour on the de-inking process. They responded by telling us that our approach was great and would not detract from the overall recyclability of the finished article. Hurrah!

So, we had our paper and our inks. Now we could take these back to the studio and get designing. It may seem a backwards process starting with the restriction of leftover materials, then thinking about what items would make best use of space on the press sheet - but it made perfect sense to us!

We love print, we love design challenges and most of all we love our new identity.

...as does Creative Review who have today published a story about it all:

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog