Practise what you publish

A hardback book with a unique cover for every copy that required no cover printing. How is this possible? We put in to practise what the book preached. SustainAble, written by Aaris Sherwin and publishing by Rockport Publishing in 2008. We were employed to create a concept promoting sustainability and design the book. Publishing isn’t without its own sustainability issues which have undergone huge improvements. From the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) (allowing businesses and consumers to identify, purchase and use wood, paper and other forest products made with materials from well-managed forests and/or recycled sources). To the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) paper, to shipping and soya-based inks and dyes. Creating our concept for the SustainAble book meant working closely with the writer, Aaris Sherwin, the publisher and the printers in China. Our idea was simple: each hardback would be covered with a test print from the printers bins. Meaning every copy was unique and required no printing*. Saving thousands of dollars in print-production, paper, ink and reduced the books carbon-footprint, offsetting some of the carbon from it’s own shipping from China to US. *The one-colour wrap-around was printed and applied to each book in the US. This saved 40mg of weight per copy from the shipping from China to the US.