Ten years ago, recycled paper  was all the rage; the trouble was that it simply wasn’t ‘green’ - or at least it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It was expensive, it cost more electricity to clean and recycle and it wasn’t necessarily environmentally sound, either in the processes used to produce it or the methods used to print on it. Ironically, the paper industry itself was always reasonably environmentally sound - virgin papers have nearly always been made from sustainable crops; it was the rest of the process that didn’t marry up.

These days, it’s much more joined up - accreditation like FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) have ensured that the process, as well as the paper itself, is ‘green’ - whether the paper is virgin, recycled or somewhere in between. It also means that to wear the badge you must be doing more than buying environmentally friendly paper, you must be joined up in the way you print. So many factors contribute to this approval process - the use of vegetable based inks, computer-to-plate (no film, no wasted silver), biodegradable laminating, water-based varnishes and - of course - environmentally friendly papers.

It’s interesting that the focus of attention has been on the forests, the printers and the print process itself rather than on the specifier which in this industry is more often than not the designer. It is we who recommend to our clients which paper stock to use and then specify that stock to the printer of choice. Often the client demands that the FSC logo be printed on their literature - sometimes to be part of the box ticking that is CSR, sometimes a genuine attempt to be green. But what is interesting is that little thought is given to the waste factor.

For instance, how often do we print more copies than we need, ‘because the run-on price is so cheap’? What do we do with all those unwanted brochures, magazines, newsletters - return them to the printers? No way, I can’t remember the last time someone asked us to dispose of their surplus unwanted print - so where does it go? Hopefully it is recycled.

Digital printing has allowed short run printing, in full colour, to become accessible to, and affordable by, everyone. As the price goes down, the quality goes up in line with technological improvements. We certainly are not litho printing the volumes we once were (who do you know who uses conventional letterheads any more, apart from IFAs and solicitors?). So in theory we are using less paper, though I know plenty of people who print out their emails to read later.

As graphic designers, we have a social responsibility to advise our clients to think green - to wait until they have six or eight people who want business cards rather than print one name at a time, to think about how many copies they actually need rather than order reams more than necessary. To even advise against printing at all if the better solution is to distribute the message electronically. However, even this can backfire - when I bought a new TV lately I had to print the 48pp instruction manual myself which cost me more in ink than the printer is worth.

With the current media attention on global warming, deforestation, sustainability, the acidity of the oceans, the melting of the ice caps, the storms, floods and the imbalance between what we use and what we produce, our focus on going green in the design and print business may seem a little over the top. But it is relevant, when you come to think of it.

OK, so here we are, teetering on the edge of the Festive Season, a New Year and a Global Recession (but not necessarily in that order) and what has 2008 brought us? Apart from 1 euro = 1 pound, the demise of Woollies, the collapse of the banking system and automotive industry as we know it, impending zero interest rates (can someone explain to me how that benefits people dependent on their savings to live?) and Doom and Gloom as Never Before.

Well it has brought us  down to earth with a bump, of course, but in spite of that there are loads of opportunities for design agencies like ours to do well in a recession. It works like this: in boom times, companies reinvent themselves and employ very expensive agencies to do it for them. It’s called rebranding. In tough times,  shrewd marketeers don’t stop spending or reinventing themselves, they just do it smarter - they use provincial agencies like Cradducks who can provide exactly the same, top quality design work but at a fraction of the cost of the big boys. They think sideways, along with us designers, to come up with leaner, meaner ideas and ways of getting more out of less.

For instance, one of our major clients has given up litho printing their 400 copies per month internal magazine and are doing it online instead, with a very limited digital print run to satisfy those who can’t cope with, or can’t access, the online version. That means a downturn in print, granted, but we continue to produce the magazine for them and have made it more interactive into the bargain.

So, is it the survival of the fittest? Yes, I guess it is and I certainly hope I won’t be sitting here in six months’ time eating my words - plenty of old, established names have already gone to the wall in this area in this industry and plenty more will go before we see Boom Time again. That means that we have to offer something they can’t, or couldn’t, and do it better. Which is where a few grey hairs come in handy: not only have we seen recession before (this is the third big one in my experience) but we have survived it and become stronger for it. We must carry on where others have left off, and we must provide what our clients want - to the brief, creatively produced, on time, on budget and with the minimum of amends.

So, to all our loyal customers, hang on in there as we intend to, and remember that in a recession it pays to market yourself even more than before. And to anyone wondering if we really can come up with the goods, pick up the phone and call me.

Happy New Year to you all.

David

For the first time ever I was asked by a new client the other day if we had such a thing as a template for a brief. My immediate reaction was “of course not, all projects are bespoke and so different you couldn’t possibly have a ‘one size fits all’ brief to cover any new job”.

This set me thinking, though - quite often the old joke about it being good to have tight briefs is rather true. Certainly better tight than woolly.

These days, a brief can range from a quick phone call saying “we need another one of those brochure thingies you did for us, same style, buzz you through the copy in a mo, need it for a show next Tuesday” to a full blown, pre-tender questionnaire with as much burocratic red tape attached to it as a local authority can muster and a very large envelope to return the stuff in by the due date.

Today I received a written instruction from a long-standing client who has perfected the art of writing a succinct brief and his one paragraph says it all: purpose, size, colours, production spec, when/how/where required and so on. He is in the minority in this skill. To write a good, tight brief without it being too prescriptive at one one extreme (we are creatives, after all) or open-ended at the other (resulting in “no, that’s not what we had in mind at all”) is not that easy.

So this set me thinking about how we could design a template for a brief; I’m sure this exists out there already, it’s just not something we have been asked for before. So what do we need to know?

1. Working/proper title (eg XYZ Show exhibition stand)

2. Description (eg 4 x 3 pop-up system)

3. Purpose (general text or image description, background information and so on)

4. Detailed specification (eg size, colours, typefaces, orientation, production process etc.)

5. When required by (nearly always wanted in a hurry, so important)

6. Delivery requirements (if a large consignment, can it be received on a pallet, for instance?)

7. Other information (eg similar to job no. 12345 from last May)

This is only a rough first draft so I’ve probably left something out - or perhaps put too much in. And I’m sure any marketing man or woman worth their salt will point me in the direction of the official template that has existed for years which we could adapt.

However, it is a start.

So let me know, from your point of view, what you think should go into a brief to ensure that we receive sufficient instruction to to do the job without either being bogged down in paper, or have us reaching for the phone to ask some pretty fundamental questions before we can proceed.