CDR Primer

An international group of 39 climate scientists created the CDR Primer, a comprehensive survey that brings together the technological, scientific, and sociological tenets of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Though technology alone cannot completely mitigate the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis, CDR will play a critical role in addressing the problem. The CDR Primer serves as humanity’s playbook for the next 100 years of carbon removal and beyond.

Scope

Book Design, Infographic Design, Data Visualization, Brand Identity, Art Direction, Web Design, Web Development

Cool Points

Carbon Removal, Sustainable Print Production, Woman-led

01

Concept

An upward arrow is a nearly universal graphic representation of positivity, success, and achievement. Bucking convention in an obvious but deliberate way, the CDR Primer adopts a downwards arrow—a gesture towards the “drawdown” of carbon and the radical imagination and innovation necessary to tackle carbon dioxide removal (and the climate crisis in general). This attempt underpins an intentional effort to develop the down arrow as a graphic symbol of the CDR movement at large.

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A vibrant, orange-to-purple gradient defines the Primer’s color palette, which moves from warm to cool from beginning to end in both the print book and website. This gradual shift evokes the global cooling that will result once the ideas, actions, and technologies outlined in the text are carried out at scale.

02

Website

The CDR Primer website, essentially an ebook, enhances the project’s accessibility through its wider audience reach. Additionally, the site includes accessibility features like the option for increased text sizes and a dark mode. Sustainability considerations, emphasized in the print production processes, also carry over to the website. The site is hosted on a server powered directly by solar (not through offsets or credits), and uses techniques like caching, low page weight, and lazy loading images to reduce its carbon impact. Finally, we put a unique spin (ba-dum) on the geometric illustrations that introduce each chapter.

Read the CDR Primer

cdrprimer.org cdrprimer.org →

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03

Infographics

In keeping with the CDR Primer’s goal to make carbon dioxide removal accessible, comprehensible, and familiar to many audiences, the layout focused on consistency, clarity, and readability. In addition to designing several key infographics from the ground up, we created an overarching design style to unify the Primer’s many charts and graphics from disparate sources into easily digestible visualizations.

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Sustainability

In order to reach as broad of an audience as possible, we designed the CDR Primer to take the form of a printed book in addition to the website. We used a 100% postconsumer recycled, FSC-certified paper for both the cover and interior. A slightly lighter weight interior text paper makes for an overall lighter book, and as a result, fewer CO₂ emissions. Our production partner, located on the Northwest coast, offered both printing and fulfillment capabilities. This allowed us to further reduce transportation emissions, simplify logistics, and better serve the book’s global audience.

We set out with the goal of creating the diecut arrow effect while avoiding the use of book board. Book board is the rigid material used in hardcover books that provides rigidity and protection, but significantly increases a book’s weight and carbon impact. A traditional softcover was too delicate and flimsy to hold the shapes left behind from the diecut arrows. Our solution was to fold the 130# cover stock in on itself and “duplex” the stock (adhere it using a water-based glue that doesn’t affect recyclability), in effect creating a 230# sheet that was rigid enough to hold the forms. This solution was less than a tenth of the thickness and weight of conventional book board.