The Difference between FSC and SFI

As a designer, I use a lot of paper. I use the most paper when printing jobs for clients. Nothing like printing 25,000 copies of something to use up a ton of paper. These days I often get asked to choose certified paper for print jobs. So what's the difference between FSC and SFI certifications?

These two older articles from Treehugger explain FSC vs SFI: Article 1 and Article 2. In summary:

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)

• Never harvests more than what grows back
• Protects biodiversity and endangered species
• Saves rare ancient trees
• Guards local streams
• Supports the local people
• Uses narrow skidding trails so as not to disrupt the rest of the forest
• Prohibits replacement by tree plantations
• Bans toxic chemicals
• Bans genetically modified trees (no GMO)

Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)

• Allows large clearcuts
• Allows logging close to rivers and streams that harms water supplies
• Allows use of toxic chemicals
• Allows conversion of old-growth forests to tree plantations
• Allows use of genetically modified trees

Some certification is probably better than no certification and I think SFI certification is improving its standards but at this point, I'm choosing FSC.

From a purely practical point of view, if you are a tight print schedule, FSC tends to be more responsive with my local vendors (getting back within hours) rather than SFI (24-36 hrs).

Design Humor

Because sometimes you just need to laugh. Check out this design humor repository at allgraphicdesign.com. Here are my favorite "You Know You're a Designer When..." sayings:

1. You've almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.
   
2. You get mad when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.
   
3. You've learned your lesson and stopped using the word "final" in any file name when saving.
   
4. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.
   
5. You've had a great design concept ruined because the client changed it beyond all recognition.
   
6. You've nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)
   
7. You can't go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
   
8. Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash.
   
9. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago.
   
10. You know the difference between fuchsia, magenta, and maroon.
    

How Do You Know What You Don't Know?

The obvious answer is "you don't." If you don't know something, by definition you don't know that you don't know it. Knowing that you don't know has been something I've been meditating on and experiencing lately.

If I don't know something, there first has to be that glimmer of knowledge, the realization that I don't know it, then the desire to know it, and then the stumbling in the dark trying to learn it.

In regards to design, if I don't know the right words to google, how will I ever find out how to do the Photoshop technique I'm envisioning? If I don't know there is an efficient short cut to a regular program task, how will I know to even look for it? If I don't know what exactly I'm looking for, how will I know when I find it? I may miss the perfect piece of design inspiration or graphical technique for a project because I don't have patience to go through more than the top 20 google results. Or I don't even know to search for it.

We often live our little slice of life in ruts—driving the same route, eating the same meals, visiting the same websites, day in day out. Part of learning is stretching out into the unknown but sometimes the amount of information out there can be overwhelming and sorting the treasure from the trash exhausting. So, while I know there are many things I don't know, sometimes I try to know them and sometimes I'm just happily ignorant of how many things I don't know.

The Beauty of A4

I worked on a poster last weekend. I needed to have 3 versions of the poster for 3 different uses. The client wanted the poster in tabloid, letter and letter-half sizes. And I wished I lived in Europe.

According to the wikipedia article on letter size: "The origin of the exact dimensions of "letter" size paper (8½ in × 11 in, 215.9 mm × 279.4 mm) are lost in tradition and not well documented. The American Forest and Paper Association argues that the dimension originates from the days of manual paper making, and that the 11 inch length of the page is about a quarter of "the average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman's arms." However, this does not explain the width or aspect ratio."

Frustratingly, only some sizes in the American paper system have similar proportions. So although letter paper is half of tabloid, its proportions are completely different. This means I had to spend lots of extra time adjusting design elements to try and make the tabloid design work in letter size. And it still doesn't look quite as good as the original design. That extra white space can make or break a design.

• Tabloid proportions: 1.5455
  
• Letter proportions: 1.2941
  
• Half letter proportions: 1.54
  

The Europeans got it right. Quoted from wiki: "The ISO 216 specifies international standard (ISO) paper sizes used in most countries in the world today. The international ISO standard is based on the German DIN standard 476 (DIN 476) from 1922. Paper in the A series format has an aspect ratio of 1: the square root of 2, although this is rounded to the nearest millimeter."

The ISO 216 also accounted for halving the preceding paper size. So A4 is both half of A3 AND of the exact same proportions. Beautiful! Every single paper size from A0 down to A8 has the aspect ratio of 1: the square root of 2.

I don't even want to get started about working in inches. If this text box is 3.125 inches then I'll make that one 4.375... Hmm, let me pull in a guide to .125 inches. What's 8.75 inches minus .125 inches?

I fondly remember my two short years of working with A3, A4 and millimeters.