Filed under: Green Design Practices | Tags: FSC Certification, FSC Certified, green brochures, green business cards, green certification, green marketing, Green Printer, green printing, green stationary, greener printer, greener printing, offset printing, print green
What is FSC Certification?
The FSC is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests. The certification that the FSC offers provides a nev level of responsibility for offset printers — the printers of your business cards, letterhead, stationary, brochures, and other communications materials.
Here is a brief list of the Principles and Critreria that the FSC requires for certification:
- Prohibit conversion of forests or any other natural habitat
- Respect of international workers rights
- Prohibition of use of hazardous chemicals
- Respect of Human Rights with particular attention to indigenous peoples
- No corruption – follow all applicable laws
- Identification and appropriate management of areas that need special protection (e.g. cultural or sacred sites, habitat of endangered animals or plants)
Make sure your next print project is done with a green offset printer — one that has FSC certification!
Filed under: Green Design Practices | Tags: corporate gifts, earth friendly, eco-friendly design, promotional gifts, promotional items, promotions, reducing waste, responsible, Uncategorized, waste
Have you ever noticed that the mugs you donate to charity first are the mugs with a company logo on them? And if you ever visit the local thrift store, you’ll see that the shelves are lined with white mugs with corporate artwork on them.
By giving out corporate gifts or promotional items that are both practical and beautiful, you are reducing waste by ensuring that these items are VALUED. Here’s how:
- Choose high quality artwork – meaning artwork that would be considered fine art and not clip art or logo art. Consider finding an artist with a style that matches the message you want to send with the gift or promotional piece. Commission some art from that artist. Or find some artwork that has already been created and license that artwork.
- Make the artwork central. The artwork should be primary and your logo and company information secondary. For example, on the coffee mug, let the artwork wrap all the way around the side and place your logo, web site address or company information on the handle or very tiny aside the base of the handle.
Filed under: Green Design Practices | Tags: digital printing, earth-friendly design, eco-friendly design, high-resolution color inkjet printer, offset printing, print-on-demand, Uncategorized
Small business owners sometimes think that they should have to go to their printer to obtain quality marketing communications materials. Not so! With a high-resolution color inkjet printer and a great design, you can easily print your own materials as you need them.
Offset printing and digital printing both require a minimum quantity to get the best value for your dollar. When your quantities are limited or you don’t need the medium very often, you can choose to print when you need it. Also, changes incur little or no cost to you should you move to a new office or fax number.
Consider letterhead, for example. If you already have a professional logo, creating clever, quality letterhead can be accomplished for only a few hundred dollars of design time. With the right selection of paper and the resulting Word template, you can write your letters right onto the letterhead file and save them to your computer.
Moreover, the information contained on your letterhead can be easily changed with a print-on-demand solution. Say you change your office number. You can make this change yourself right in the document rather than having to incur more professional design fees — and going to print again.
Print on demand can work for most marketing communications media you send to your printer:
- Letterhead
- Postcards
- Invitations
- Business Cards
- Address Labels
- Shipping Labels
- CD Labels
- Brochures
- Sales Sheets / One-Sheets
- Booklets
Not all projects work well, however. Packaging, folders, manuals with lots of pages, and books are better brought to your offset printer. Also, when you need 200 units (pages, cards, sheets of labels, etc) or more, an offset or digital solution will save you the extra work involved in printing, hole punching, collating, stapling, and other assembly and preparation.
Contact us if you are interested in a low-quantity, print-on-demand solution for your business or independent practice.
