publication
THE MAKING OF A BOOK BY HAND Chennai’s Tara Books is a fine example of truly sustainable graphic design and print production, says Rathna Ramanathan
Jason McLennan in The Philosophy of Sustainable Design (2004) summarizes sustainable design as the redefining of how things – buildings, objects, etc. – are designed, made and operated to be more responsible to the environment and responsive to people. India is a country that has an excellent tradition in sustainable design and production. Just a glance at Aditi and M P Ranjan’s Handmade in India: A geographic encyclopaedia of Indian handicrafts (2009) gives one a sense of the wealth and range of local design and craft processes that are indigenous to our country. In industrial production processes, sustainability is much harder to achieve as the focus is on achieving the best quality product at the lowest possible price and within the fastest production time. This isn’t always achievable in a local context. In publishing it has become common practice for many publishers (particularly in Europe and North America) to send books to print in Asia – particularly China.
www.m9design.com
www.tarabooks.com 18 POOL #35
This is problematic for a few reasons, first of which is the environmental impact of the lithographic offset process, which traditionally uses masses of