Monday, December 22, 2014

The Basics Of Sustainable Digital Printing

By Stacey Burt


In the recent past people have become aware of the impacts of environmental degradation. As such there have been measures and attempts to develop products for this purpose. Among them is sustainable digital printing. This started only as a fad but has been growing in strength and influence that promoters and publishers have taken a serious approach to it.

Digital printing can be expressed as the transfer of a digitalized media from a storage device directly into various forms of media directly. This process has eliminated the need for rudimentary extras such as printing plates, repulsive oils and the rubber blankets used in the older lithographic and letterpress systems such as offset printing.

The advent of environmental consciousness among the general public has caused producers and print companies to feel the need to adopt to their needs. This has brought rise to the new trend of products dubbed as going green. Printing has advanced to green printing with new materials and new forms of printers such as the laser jet and ink jet types.

There are certain steps and measures that people have learnt and adopted in they strive to progress into this particular printing and publishing. Key among them is the use of recyclable, renewable and biodegradable materials. These include vegetable based inks, recyclable paper produced under fair and safe working conditions among many more.

The size and weight of paper is a factor many printing firms and companies are willing to reconsider. A trend is merging where lighter but more compact paper is being used in this printing. It can also be noted that the kind of materials printed today is not of standard dimensions. This is a deliberate move where portions of paper are trimmed off, which has been shown to have immense saving results.

Package design has also evolved and is now moving towards Eco friendliness and sustainability. They have adopted new printing and packaging designs that are both functional in multiple ways and reusable. This form of packaging can be re-purposed for other uses such as creating chairs, pet houses, and light bulb holders among other uses.

A noted shift in the print and production is the introduction and popular uptake of modular design. This concept was borrowed from modular building from engineering and architectural circles. This trend involves creating custom solutions with prefabricated or standardized materials. Such materials are easily recyclable, easy to update and repair.

Fonts have also been a decision factor in this printing circles. Product designers are being seen to have a shift towards font faces that are not only elegant but easy on the eye in terms of reading. The font type should also be regarded as ink efficient for it to be acceptable to use especially in packaging and promotional material.

Digital printing has taken the printing and production fields by storm. The sustainability has been questioned, but recent progress has shown that it is proving itself adequately sustainable. The concept may be new but as shown, with the few steps, it is easy to understand and adopt.




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