Contextual Studies Essay Research: 3

Following on from my inspiration from Penguin publishing and my recent investigations into eco-friendly printing companies, I wanted to discover a company which could be used to print the completion of my upcoming module ‘Commercial Illustration’ where I am designing a children’s book. I felt this would be extremely relevant to my future practices and wanted to investigate further whether the printing of an eco-friendly book would be possible within the UK.

For this I found a company called ‘Ashley House: Printing Company’ where I discovered they are actually knows as “One of the most eco-friendly printing companies in the UK” (Eco Print | Eco-friendly Printing | Green Printing | Ashley House, 2020) which was supported within their websites ‘Eco Printing’ page which discussed their ‘zero landfill policy’ and replantation of woodland resources used to create their products.

I really enjoyed the theme and purpose of this website, not only is it there to enable people and businesses to print more sustainably using recyclable materials with renewable energy methods, but it is also a very aesthetically pleasing website and keeps the viewers’ attention. I feel this helps when discussing such an important topic as often the information found can be discussed formally in a less appealing manner, leading to boredom and lack of interest. However, through the use of clever visuals, cute animation loading screens and quick effective language I was fully engaged with this website throughout my time here.

Ashley Company is also FSC certified and offers the individual the opportunity to incorporate symbols on their finished products to let buyers know that the item was printed using a multitude of sustainable methods. This also increases the appeal of the product to modern society as it has been discovered that apparently 62% of consumers are more likely to purchase items which use sustainable methods.

Due to this, by having the availability of incorporating these sustainability symbols within your printed products also increases the chance for consumer appeal within today’s society which I found very helpful and interesting.

This figure was identified within my part of my research based around sustainable artists, specifically Piera Cirefice, who has partnered with ‘Noissue’ to create personalised sustainable tissue paper to package the items within her small business.

I couldn’t find much information on how this product was specifically eco-friendly other than by purchasing it the individual / business is also able to plant trees in deforested regions around the world with every order, in order to minimise the negative emissions caused from the printing and development of products. I found this highly useful to find out although I would like to know more about how ‘Noissue’ classifies their sustainability.

Regardless the artist themselves does this in a multitude of ways, for instance they work their small business from their home to save on travel emissions and other rental requirements in order to reduce their carbon footprint, they recycle packaging from previous order, use recyclable materials and are aiming to phase out single-use cello plastic within their online store, not only this but their prints are also FSC certified!

I found this extremely inspiring seeing as they are a small business working from home, similar to my working situation currently and would be highly interested in exploring how I could imply some more of these concepts within my own way of working where possible.