Back to School

I'm taking an online class from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) called "Papers, Inks and Printing". It's a 5-week crash course on sustainability and print design. I recommend anyone involved in print media to take it and learn many of the details that are left out of the print equation. I am finding a whole new context for sustainable alternatives over conventional ones. There are many complex issues related to sustainability that most people are unaware of, and I will strive to educate and promote even more alternatives next year. Find out more at online.mcad.edu

What's In Your Ink?

About 75% of print shops use petroleum-based products for inks and solvents that are extremely harmful to the environment and to those who use them. In fact, out of approximately 56,000 raw materials used in inks, 80 percent are petrochemical derivatives and 15 percent come from the forest industry (See Ink Backgrounder in this link FlintGroup). What's a less harmful alternative? Soy ink. Soy ink performs just as well, it has low VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), it's more translucent so the color is brighter and it runs a little thin so printers can use less ink.

Book Worm: The SimpleLife Guide to Tree-Free, Recycled and Certified Papers

This little book is a wonderful tool-kit for anyone who has never seen or known how many faces paper can have! It's jam-packed with information, from the history of paper-making to the state of the forest industry, to a list of manufacturers, to 17 different kinds of *real* paper samples. The samples include high quality recycled stocks, paper made with hemp, kenaf, bagasse (from sugar cane), banana, coffee, cigar and old money. The author is Dan Imhoff, and the book is published by Watershed Media.

Adopting A Manatee

These gentle giants are vegetarian mamals that are related to the elephant. Until Jacques Cousteau visited Florida's Blue Spring in 1970, these animals were constantly harrassed, people would carve their initials in their flesh, lasso them and ride them. Manatees have no natural predators, but they often get run over by fast-speeding powerboats. As they seek refuge in warm spring waters when the ocean gets too cold, these areas are now sought after due to urban development. We've adopted Brutus, an old timer. Find out more at www.savethemanatee.org

What to do when all you have is an awful, low-res image? Number 1: you ask the author of the image if you can have that in hirez ;-) Ok, that never works. Number 2: take a deep breath and get centered. Number 3: change the image size in Photoshop in increments of 100% and resample the image to the "nearest neighbor" at 300 dpi. Then, you go up to menu, select filters and add noise so the digited pixels get confused. So basically instead of seeing the enlarge pores of the image, it's got a nice, soft, grainy texture overlay that distracts the eye.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!