#conservation design

[quantumartblog]

🌿 "Branched Elephant" T-shirt 🌿

Excited to share my latest design! This T-shirt blends an elephant silhouette with vibrant leaves and birds—perfect for wildlife lovers and nature enthusiasts. Took a while to create, and I’m thrilled it’s finally here!

Let me know what you think!

[ydteus]

The Third House | Book One

Coronabeth Tridentarius | Ianthe Tridentarius

[thererisesaredstar]

Citizens of the USSR are obliged to protect nature, conserve its natural wealth.

USSR Constitution, Article 67 poster (1979)

[reasonsforhope]

"At HarperCollins, a lot of attention and thought is given to deciding exactly what combinations of margin measurements, font, and layout feel most appropriate for the genre, and writing style.

But in a case of do-your-part environmentalism, designers at the publishing house have now standardized a series of subtle and imperceptible alterations to normal font style, layouts, and ink that have so far removed the need for 245 million book pages, totaling 5,618 trees.

Telling the story in Fast Company, representatives from HarperCollins, one of the four largest publishing houses in the world, explained that the idea first arose in Zondervan Bibles, HarperCollins’ Christian publishing division. Being that the Bible is 2,500 pages or sometimes more, saving ink and pages was not just an environmental consideration, but one of production costs.

A new typeface called NIV Comfort Print allowed Zondervan to shave 350 pages off of every Bible, which by 2017 had amounted to 100 million pages, and which, as Fast Company points out, would be four times higher than the Empire State Building if stacked.

The production and design teams then wondered how much they could save if they applied the same concepts to other genres like romance and fiction. Aside from the invention of the eBook, publishing hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years, and the challenge was a totally novel one for the teams—to alter all their preconceived ideas and try and find a font and typeface that resulted in fewer pages without being harder to read.

They eventually standardized 14 different combinations their tests determined were the most environmentally friendly, and which delivered an unchanged reading experience.

But the challenge didn’t stop there. Printed books, one might not know, are printed in large sheets which are then folded into sections of sixteen pages, meaning that Leah Carlson-Stanisic, associate director of design at HarperCollins, has to calculate the savings of space, words, and ultimately pages with the help of her team to fall in multiples of sixteen.

Nevertheless, they have been successful with it so far, and in the recent print run of one popular book, 1 million pages (or a number near 1 million that coincides with the 16 times tables) were saved.

“We want to make sure our big titles, by prominent authors, are using these eco-fonts,” Carlson-Stanisic said. “It adds up a little bit at a time, saving more and more trees.”"

-via Good News Network, April 4, 2024

--

Note: Great! Waiting to see this on the rest of their books and at the other big publishers!

Actually, though, it's worth noting that this may not come quickly to the other large publishers, because Harper Collins almost certainly owns that font - meaning that other publishers would have to pay HarperCollins in order to use it, on an ongoing basis.

More on publishing shit and more realistic solutions here below the cut!

What I'm hoping for and think is more likely is that this will inspire the development of open source eco-friendly fonts, which would be free for anyone to use. That would make it far more likely other publishers would adopt eco-friendly fonts.

I'm also hoping it would inspire other publishers to create similar eco-friendly fonts of their own.

Ideally, there would be a whole new landscape of (hopefully mostly open source) eco-friendly fonts. And/or to see calculations of the eco-friendliness of popular existing fonts, compared to each other.

If we could have a publicly accessible list of calculations for different fonts, including fonts designed to maximize eco-friendliness, I really do think that it would affect which fonts publishers choose to use. Here's why:

Most people in publishing are on the left (notoriously, actually) and really do care about the environment

People in publishing are plenty aware of these issues re: paper and trees, I promise

Shorter books means smaller production costs - and possibly smaller shipping costs as well, over time! So it would save them money too.

Eco-friendly fonts could also be combined with other measures for greater effect, such as bamboo paper (already in use for a lot of projects where page color/quality is more flexible) and thinner paper (aka paper with a lower weight) that uses less trees.

Don't expect books to all move to just one or two different fonts, though. Publishers and typesetters and font designers will innovate to create more options instead, though it will take longer. This is because different books really do use different fonts for various different reasons - one new font to rule them all isn't really a solution here.

"Every book is in the same font" may sound like a "whatever" deal to a lot of people, but as someone who works in publishing - trust me, it would actually make your reading experience worse, even if you could never quite put your finger on why.

[thingsorganizedneatly]

Inside the book conservation lab at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photos by Nicholas Calcott / New York Times

[andpierres]

ok guys, i promise this is the last time you'll hear about the batpacks from me for a while, but our campaign ends LITERALLY tomorrow night & i wanted to plug it one last time before it ends!

as of writing, we've unlocked ALL nine batpack designs AND reached all our stretch goals!

you get free stuff by supporting the campaign now, and we also have a partnership with lubee bat conservancy where you can donate to them by purchasing this bonus sticker as an add on!

soooo yeah!! if you have the means, you can find the 🔗 to the campaign below or in the reblogs! 🦇

[conservethis]

I IMPLORE you, please stop it with this kind of binding on books! As a reader I hate these, and as a bookbinder I hate these!!

The name for this nonsense is a Swiss binding, btw.

[jesncin]

I just learned that MAWS’s design for Lois is partly based off a character named Luz, from some Disney cartoon called Owl House. I find this interesting since this Luz character is supposed to be Afro-Latina, yet MAWS used her design for a Korean-American Lois. But more weirdly, Luz is a 14-year-old teenage character, and they used this as basis for a 23-year-old Lois. I think this is why MAWS Lois’s face looks weirdly young, and she’s always smaller than Clark so she looks like a teenager.

Huh so I thought this was just something the internet pointed out at large but it looks like the MAWS crew essentially lightly confirmed that Lois looks like Luz because someone who worked on the Owl House also worked on MAWS. Which is a stretch by association but also frankly, why? As you said, one is Korean American and the other is Afro Latina. I'm seeing people even say that Lois/Luz look like S5 Catra from She Ra (another show the crew are very vague about confirming character's races/ethnicities). It feels like series animation has a comfortable "ambiguously brown girl face" they like falling back on and it's really annoying! Like if we can dunk on Disney Princesses for having the same face, surely this is also worthy of criticism?

Especially in regards to Lois being the eldest character here (as a 23 year old in MAWS)- it's so unfortunate that by association and poor character design, we're not allowing her to look like a young woman. She's infantilized in both design and writing. I have no issue with her being short or generally young looking (I too am short and constantly mistaken as a teenager not just by white people), but it's clear many variables are at play in infantilizing a character historically meant to be an accomplished woman with her shit together.

I think we need to be critical of the fact white Lois is allowed to be a successful and independent career woman while the minute we get an Asian Lois outside of the comics, we get an Asian Lois who is "the worst Lois in the multiverse" and is adorkable quirky spunky girlie who needs the help of men to get hired by the Daily Planet. What does that say about what we think of Asian Women.

[todayontumblr]

Tuesday, August 1.

Architecture.

Firmitas, utilitas, venustas.

These are the central pillars of, well, #architecture, according to Roman architect Vitruvius in the early 1st century AD. These are the principles that should guide the mind, eye, and, ultimately, the hand of the architect. The original translation would convey this as firmness, commodity, and delight. Another translation into more contemporary English would be firstly, durability: that a building should stand up robustly and remain in good condition; secondly, utility: it should be suitable for the purposes for which it is used; and finally, beauty: that it should be aesthetically pleasing.

There are many definitions, understandings, and theories of what makes architecture, or what separates it from construction. What is easily understood is that architecture is a testament to our ability to create forms and landscapes as compelling as those provided by the natural world—and that you very rarely feel as present as when you walk the streets of a new city, and marvel at the shapes, forms, and styles that surround you. 

But why not leave it to the experts? Le Corbusier, a renowned 20th-century architect, once wrote: "You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces: that is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture". 

[getpoliticaluk]

Who wants to see the tories new poster

The car is owned by a Canadian company, the ship is Swiss, the plane is 50 years old, the football team have never won anything, the king has cancer, and the prime minister was never elected hell he was his party’s second choice after Liz truss,

also we haven’t been the second most powerful country in almost a century but even if we were the pride in the mediocrity of coming second to the USA a country teetering on the brink of Fascism, actively supporting a genocide, and which will likely not exist in its current form by the end of my life

[xannerz]

i wish nothing but misery for every prolifer

[ramunethejoe]

I REALLY love the New Norm 😍😍🥰/sarc

Decided to draw some fanart, might finish!

[thererisesaredstar]

Do not destroy the landscape (ca. 1980s)

[jrueships]

older white men who have to announce how much they prefer college sports over professional sports & obsess over it kinda creep me out idk

[lace-arts]

New sticker!

[hirazuki]

I finally got around to working out my full-body design for Námo!

The second image is inspired by a scene in this lovely fic by @melkors-defense-attorney, which is hands down the most adorable, wholesome, precious Námo scene I have ever read ♡