I’m holding in my hands a catalog created for the 2003 California Design Biennial at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. It’s roughly 8 x 11 inches in size, 80-some pages long and printed on 100-pound text-weight paper that makes a deep, satisfying snap as I flip the pages. Its covers are printed with four match colors, its interior pages with two match and four process colors. Photos and illustrations of everything from sports equipment to cosmetic packages and trendy furniture explode from the bright white pages. The text—8-point Verdana, in black, halftones and color throughout—stands out as clear and crisp as an autumnal country morning. Created by the San Francisco-based firm Chen Design Associates (CDA), the document is printed entirely on recycled paper. Everything about it is first-rate. More than an ordinary exhibition catalog, the fact that it’s printed on recycled paper proves something many graphic designers don’t know about, may be deceived by, or simply deny.
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The 2003 California Design Biennial, created by Chen Design Associates. Over 80 pages printed on recycled 100-pound text-weight paper; the covers are printed with four match colors; the pages are printed with two match colors and four process colors. Whether clothing or product, the photographs of all the items featured in the catalog jump off the page, a testament to the potential of recycled paper.
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“Eighty percent of our projects are on recycled,” says Josh Chen, creative director at his namesake CDA and art director on the PMCA project. “Recycled paper has gotten a bad rap, but lately paper companies have made great strides. The quality is amazing. In many cases, you can’t tell the difference between virgin and recycled.”
With Chen’s catalog as proof, the moment to understand that difference between virgin papers and various recycled and alternative papers is now, when world and U.S. consumption of paper is at an all-time high. According to the Worldwatch Institute, the average American uses some 660 pounds of paper per year, a typical worker about 12,000 sheets annually. An average mid-sized university goes through more than a million sheets of bond and letterhead every month. Although Americans compose five percent of the world’s population, they consume (and produce) more than one-third of its paper. Only about 50% of this is recycled (much of it is shipped to China for packaging), but more than 90 percent of the U.S.’s printing and writing paper is still made from virgin fiber. By 2010, demand for all paper will increase by 32 percent.
Let these statistics be the designer’s wake-up call. Professional creatives have a particular responsibility, and must teach themselves more respectful ways of using natural resources. “Design is at the very center of a challenge recognized by both business and society,” explains Richard Grefé, executive director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. “The profession’s success will depend on how designers internalize this challenge during their creative process.” For designers, making use of recycled paper is one of the easiest ways to start.
The good news: recycled paper is better than ever. Dozens of mills and manu-facturers are creating new lines of superior options for the working designer. New Leaf, Mohawk, Neenah, Domtar, Fox River and more than a dozen other companies sell a range of coated, uncoated, copy and specialty papers in a variety of weights—all with sizeable percentages of recycled fiber. High-quality recycled paper is plentiful, and dropping in price. Clients are starting to ask for it, often because they believe using it says their business is a responsible one. And designers who spec and implement recycled are increasingly happy with the results.
Brian Dougherty, an award-winning green designer and partner at Celery Design Collaborative in Oakland, California, says designers face twin barriers when considering recycled paper. The first is psychological: overcoming outdated perceptions that recycled is inferior. Doubters should peruse the detailed and ongoing listening survey commissioned by Conservatree and available online, where respondents report that in nearly every instance, recycled paper performs as well as its virgin counterpart, from its use in copy machines to qualities of strength characteristics—tear, tensile, elongation, stiffness—to clarity of printing. Designers’ second barrier, according to Dougherty, is the steep learning curve required to inform themselves about (and confidently spec) alternative papers. With this in mind, Celery publishes an annually updated “Ecological Guide to Paper” that collects the best companies and products into one linked Web site.
It’s important to make clear that the two products will never be identical. Jeff Mendelsohn is president of New Leaf, which makes and sells more than 20 different recycled papers: “A super-bright white or ultra-premium coated paper is a finely tuned product,” he says, “and you can’t fine-tune recycled. But basic coated papers? Opaques? Text and cover? Letterhead? Recycled does extremely well.”
The key to satisfaction in working with recycled paper seems to be getting to know it. Josh Chen reports that CDA chooses paper they’ve used before and are confident about how it performs. Experimentation is key: “We learned lessons early on about how to maximize, how to print designs [on recycled] with the kind of quality we were hoping for,” he says. “You need to work with printers you trust, who know what they’re doing, can offer tips, do test runs, adjust curves or color so the desired effect is closer to what you have in mind.”
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Screen-printed on recycled papers, these greeting cards from ferdinand demonstrate how recycled papers can indeed make ink pop off the surface.
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“Like any firm, we have our standard papers we specify most often; they just happen to be recycled,” adds Brian Dougherty. “As you get familiar with them, understanding the papers’ differences becomes part of your studio’s knowledge.”
Ann Worthington, an environmental print specialist at Hemlock Printers in Burnaby, British Columbia, suggests that designers are beginning to grasp the nuances of how printing on recycled paper is different than printing on virgin. Not better, not worse, just different. “Comparing virgin to recycled on an uncoated sheet, the surfaces would be roughly the same in terms of ink hold-out,” she says. “Uncoated paper isn’t a smooth surface, so the ink gets into the grooves. You’ll definitely see a difference between something printed on a double clay-coated sheet versus 100 percent post-consumer.”
Yet such nuances are only part of the story. Almost universally, the characteristic most designers like best about recycled paper is the way it feels. “We prefer to print something beautiful on a rough surface,” says Bruce Licher of Licher Art & Design in Sedona, Arizona. “Our sensibility is more delicate these days, but in the past, we’ve designed a lot of our work to look almost third-world-like.”
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Common Ground and Conscious Choice magazines inform readers how they can make their lives green. The magazines’ production values meet its content; the pages are printed on 100% post-consumer recycled stock while the cover is a combination of pre- and post-consumer waste.
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“Tactility is a large part of why we specify recycled,” adds Nathan Durant, a senior designer at Elixir Design in San Francisco. “Right now we’re printing a one-color letterpress on grade-school construction paper with a lot of recycled content. We like its toothiness. It has a grassroots feel that’s very appropriate for certain clients.” Josh Chen admits that recycled paper’s sensual qualities have always attracted him. “I’m a very tactile person,” he says. “I’m always drawn to paper that’s a little unusual.”
But doesn’t recycled cost more? Yes, some are slightly more expensive than virgin paper, but they’re beginning to approach one another and, for many studios, the chance to make an ecological difference outweighs the negligible price disparity. But isn’t bleach used in making some recycled paper? How does a designer keep from harming the environment in other ways? That’s easy: buy products that don’t use it; they’re widely available. What about alternative-fiber papers? Many are excellent; shop around and experiment. And how do you know if a company has adopted responsible forestry practices? Easy again; look for the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) logo, which has the backing of the Natural Resources Defense Council, World Wildlife Fund, and Nature Conservancy.
In the end, the choice between virgin and recycled is partly a matter of aesthetics: If you’re looking to spec a crystal-white sheet of exceptional quality for a conservative client, you probably won’t find a recycled option that satisfies. But the choice is philosophical, too: Designers who open their eyes to all possibilities will likely find they can satisfy most clients and do the earth a good turn as well. Mostly, opting for recycled is a way to acknowledge that design can be about more than minute analysis, as in: yes, the bright white virgin sheet is impressive, but is it really necessary? “Designers scrutinize things so closely,” suggests Josh Chen. “It should be about the overall feeling of a piece.”
A final point: If you and your studio are serious about reducing paper consumption, consider other ways to integrate the “recycled” concept. At Celery, Brian Dougherty re-designs tab folders, door hangers and other paper products in order to maximize his press sheets. And at Werner Design Werks in Minneapolis, principal Sharon Werner sleuths out caches of old unused paper: bingo sheets, butter wrappers, antique envelopes, wallpaper from thrift stores and junk shops. When printing on these, she finds the effect is interesting and innovative. “We definitely have our challenges,” Werner says of her current fascination. “It’s a labor of love. Still, there’s something really nice about the ephemeral quality of a found piece.”
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