There is nothing new in the ecologically-friendly approach to manufacturing, construction and agricultural industries. Minimizing the negative environmental impact during production has become a major global trend in recent years.
Today, environmental issues are particularly acute. Such notions as energy efficiency, recycling of different materials, refusal of internal combustion engines in the automotive industry and other things are reaching the central places of economic development in many countries.
But the world needs more — new ideas and concepts in all the possible segments appear daily. Food, cosmetics, fashion, manufacturing. Wait, we are definitely missing something… Branding!
Branding is that magic word that refers both to the construction of a brand and to all the factors that make up the values of the organization and that will influence customer behavior, and accordingly affect the business profit. It's a powerful word with an incredibly huge task.
This side of the business has not been left aside, and as a result, a new trend in logo design segment has been formed — eco-branding.
A distinctive feature of ecological-branding is a strong emphasis on eco-friendliness, sustainability, safety and unique usefulness for people of a certain product. At the same time, the approach to the implementation of such direction may be quite different.
The most common way to implement eco-branding can be a change in the production scheme, refusal of certain materials or the use of recycled ones. This is the approach chosen today by many companies involved in the production of sportswear and footwear. In this way, they rid the environment of those harmful substances that are released during the disposal of polyethylene, plastic, etc.
Some brands emphasize their eco-focus in visual attributes. One of the pioneers of this movement was Interbrand Paris, the French design agency lead by Sylvain Boyer. They suggested redrawing the logos of the world's largest companies to use less ink in the production process.
Interbrand Paris is developing an “Eco-Friendly Brand Design Process” that suggests logos with less ink density to be more ecological and economical and offers examples of well-known logos and the ink “savings” as proof. They also say full-color logos take up more server space and consumer more energy.
If the huge brands reduce the ink in a logo there will be a positive impact on the environment and on the company's economy. To be more exact, a 35% reduction in ink usage can save millions of beautiful trees a year.
We all remember the story about Nike's internal application, where the company wanted to show the ecological impact of different fabrics and color dyes to the designers.
But what about its visual identity? The Nike logo — a famous Swoosh is one of the most recognizable emblems in the world and one of the most inspirational logos of all times.
With the eco-branding concept, it will be possible to use almost 25% less ink for the Nike Swoosh, which makes a huge difference when you imagine billions of branded boxes and tags. And the iconic emblem will still be the iconic emblem, instantly recognizable across the globe.
The graphic design trends of recent years also include minimalism and the use of negative space, which blends in well with eco-branding days.
Even without examples such as FedEx, negative space is a fascinating trend that designers are deservedly trying to discover in 2019. Excluding something from the design, you attract even more attention to this area. Such solutions are created by those who strive to abandon almost everything until the moment when the design can disappear completely. Such experiments lead to non-trivial use of negative space, making it a separate category.
This approach makes it possible to present the product as a socially responsible brand, the main value of which is care about the future of the planet.
Despite the fact that eco-branding is a trendy phenomenon, the benefits of its implementation can hardly be overestimated, because it contains only positive vibes and goals.
