We mean it. Do you?
There are no two ways about it. Being seen to be green is a marketing no-brainier in the 21st century. But watch out. Consumers are smarter than ever, so before you can say it like you mean it, you gotta mean it. So what about us? Do we really mean it?
Well, at Gendall, we’re acutely aware that as designers, the decisions we make at work each day can have a massive impact on the environment. For instance, we specify many hundreds of tonnes of paper annually. We know it takes energy and water (masses of it) to produce a single sheet of paper, and recycled paper, quite simply, uses far less - so we specify its use except in the very few situations where it can’t be applied. And in those cases we specify papers made from timber that is sustainably forested and uses little or no chlorine in production. We apply a similar philosophy to sign and exhibition work – the signs we created for the Eden Project are almost entirely biodegradable.
But we go further than that. We’re proud to have challenged clients about the materials they use in production. And we are entirely confident that the businesses that genuinely embrace corporate environmental and social responsibility will be the ones who win the branding battles in the long run.
We do not believe that the world can somehow consume itself back from the brink of climate chaos with smarter products. There are simply too many people in the world for that. With current rates of population growth we will end up needing the equivalent of two Planet Earths to meet our needs… unless we simply consume less. Never has Meis Van der Rohe’s modernist maxim ‘less is more’ been more true. So don’t be surprised if we suggest less packaging, less pages or less meetings. Just remember - we really mean more.
