Green Leaf Entry

Paperless Poster // Green Drinks

By AGENCY F Design

The Idea

Problem: Promoting a sustainable event and eco focused marketing firm with an extremely small footprint. It needed to carry messaging, say drinks at a glance and feel well designed and avoid the common stigma that sustainable design is brown or burlap. It needed to feel modern and elegant.
This Paperless Poster was produced for AIGA Minnesota’s Sustainability Program – reDesign. It had to communicate sustainability while simultaneously grabbing attention. This Paperless Poster screen-printed on location with non-toxic, water-based inks, looks more elegant on a coffee shop, restaurant or store window than a taped piece of paper and yet with less waste and fewer impressions we gained more attention, drawing our largest crowd of the season. The speaker, who is an eco marketing group was so impressed they now offer it as a service, so it spoke to them.

Delivery of Work

This communication reached people around town on various windows of the more sustainable locations in Minneapolis, but our mention of it through social media and word of mouth increased the awareness of the event many times more. So much so, other Green Drink groups around the country were asking how to replicate the process. The idea of using screen-printing ink direct to a window was completely new. So much so that various locations asked us that we repeat the process for the next event. It was featured in The Living Principles (AIGA Sustainability), blogged about in the U.K., Netherlands, U.S. and just highlighted in Neenah Paper's Green With Envy online magazine. This was 100% the audience we needed to impress for the Green Drinks event. Taking the Paperless Posters down is easier then using a razor on tape and the quarter sized ink ball is inert and okay for regular trash disposal, being non-toxic.

The Results

The idea promoted the event better than any previous efforts which often included: more impressions, a larger volunteer group and more energy or waste. AGENCY F did more with less, which is what we strive for - smarter informed design.
It positioned both AIGA Minnesota as a leader in sustainable ideas and understanding while mirroring the speaker's mission of eco marketing as well. The speaker was quoted, saying "Paperless poster. The coolest way to promote Element Six's speaking engagement." Awareness of reDesign and Green Drinks continues to grow. People are still talking many months later and other Green Drinks around the world noticed our efforts. It remains the most popular story on the Living Principles website, months later.
The greater idea that the Paperless Poster presents to the design community is "ﾅAs we move further down the path of making a more sustainable society, itﾒs not enough to just make the same old things a bit less nasty. We have to challenge ourselves to find completely new ways of getting things done. In the case of the paperless (and vinyl-less) poster, the designers asked themselves: What is the goal hereﾗto make another poster (even if itﾒs printed on eco paper with eco inks), or to communicate information? When we allow ourselves to step back and look hard at what it is weﾒre trying to do, rather than starting with how to do it, a whole new set of options opens up to us. When you set out to design a printed poster, in the end youﾒll have a printed poster. When you start with the idea of communication, anything can happen!" - Wendy Jedlicka, CPP

Credits

 

Event Sponsors

Additional generous support provided by Lagunitas Brewing Comapny and The Fraternal Order of Eagles #34