Benjamin Wong is a Art student at the Academy of Art University in San Fransisco. As a school project, he chose a way to make ecopaper's marketing more appealing. This is his story

The Reason

With the growing awareness of sustainability today, the way we use nature's resources needs to be re-examined in order to understand the necessary changes needed to make our environment a much better place to live in. Sustainability and environmentalism are in need of a makeover in order to become more attractive and to be able to reach out to a larger audience.

The Why

During my Fall semester (2008) at the Academy of Art University (San Francisco, CA), I had taken a course called Graphic Design 2 under the direction of my instructor, Laura Milton. The course was designed to focus on the implications of sustainability for a specific industry, in this case I chose the paper industry. The chosen company would then go through a process of developing a new way of marketing its products and/or services in a more appealing way. After having done research on the specific company and its market, I began the process of rebranding the company and giving it a whole new voice based on the core messages and ideas needed to communicate to the masses.

Ecopaper Gets Chosen

After researching various companies I came upon Ecopaper and was intrigued with the idea of having "tree-free paper", which was something I have never heard about before. As I looked further into the ideas and concept of Ecopaper, it was amazing to find out how the company was able to reuse agricultural waste (bananas, lemons, mangoes etc.) as a sustainable method to save our environment and rain forests from being lost all together. I felt it was a great opportunity to be able to give the company a new voice and to let people know of its innovative ideas and how everyone can become a part of this growing awareness.

The Idea

The idea of this project was to see how our final design campaign will be used by the company for its exhibit at the San Francisco Green Festival. The redesign of the current logo was tough. I went through a series of sketches, some involving ideas of growth within an environment and other ideas about paper coming from its 'roots'. I then thought of trying to communicate the feeling of where Ecopaper had originated from, and understanding the meaning and purpose behind the company. So I decided to stray away from the idea of just recycling, but to understand that the company wants to preserve the rain forest environment through the creation of tree-free papers. So after several sketches and computer revisions, I decided to incorporate a bird that would symbolize the environment of Costa Rica, which was where the idea of having tree-free paper had begun.

The Process

The next process was to design a brochure that would help the reader become more aware of what Ecopaper is doing and how the company is making a change in the world through a strong narrative structure. My concept for this piece was to find unique and common sayings/quotes that would be easily understood by the reader, but to also help them relate back to the piece. Take for instance the saying "When life gives you lemons...", which in turn ended with "make paper". Having the contrast between a close up image of a lemon in relation to the bold typography really helps emphasis the saying. The quotes/sayings were intended to grab the readers attention and to make them want to find out the full meaning, which may have them wondering how one could ever produce paper out of lemons. The brochure moves onto discussing the process of making tree-free paper, and later talking about how we should be understanding of our paper wastes and to encourage thoroughness. I've also provided a spread dedicated to infographics that show the progression of paper recovery since 1993. The last spread goes into detail about where the reader can purchase from Ecopaper and how a percentage of their purchases will benefit under privileged orphans at Hospicio De Huerfanos San Jose.

As a promotional item for the campaign, I decided to use the same concept seen in the brochure, but putting more emphasis on Ecopaper's Banana paper to grab attention. So with the headline boldly saying "Instant paper: Just add banana" it becomes intriguing to the viewer, which in turn can draw interest to the company to find out more information through the brochure and the website. Another promotional item was a set of notepads that were to be given out as samples, using specific papers from the collection.

The Result

This project has definitely opened up my eyes and has also been inspiring throughout the process. Learning about the process it takes to produce tree-free paper has really made me understand that there is so much potential to make our environment a much better place to live in.