Dear reader,
An Artist’s Vision is ready to showcase artists at the forefront of impactful and vital climate action. We bring you stories from our beloved intersection of art and climate, featuring artists big and small from the UK to Mexico to Tahiti. AAV’s articles are divided into two categories: problem—based art and design, and solution—based products and innovation.
The artists behind our problem-based stories are using their craft to show audiences how climate change is experienced around the world. They are breaking barriers in discussions on sustainability, making this information accessible and digestible to anyone. Meanwhile solution-based creators are paving the way for a green future in their respective fields — by developing alternative sustainable designs which give consumers a chance to live more consciously.
An Artist’s Vision was founded by Mieke Kristine Faeste in 2019, in an effort to address and discuss political issues through art. Issue 1 was an amalgamation of different creative practices with ambitious multisensory elements like a soundscape included in the magazine. Though it began in Mieke’s living room, AAV became something much bigger than she could have imagined. In 2022, after securing a financial investment – and investing even more time — AAV has grown into a real team, supported by people who believe in the cause and by the incredible artists who work with us.
Our current team is made up of Mieke, Alicja, Chloe, Aurora and Jonathan. Alicja is the lead journalist, a multidisciplinary writer with a passion for sustainability and social justice who focuses on cross-cultural and international perspectives. Our strategist and sales lead, Chloe, has worked in production and screenwriting in Lisbon, and has now brought her creative direction to us in London. Aurora is a web developer and graphic designer based in Valencia who has taken a creative approach to the AAV aesthetic, from print to digital. Finally, Jonathan is our contributing journalist, whose decades of experience at top publications (BBC, Reuters, etc.) provide a valuable and informed outlook for AAV’s discussions on sustainability.
When exploring sustainability we find that there is no perfect definition. Some environmentally sustainable options come into conflict with other socioeconomic factors like food stability, so each case must be considered individually. At AAV we believe in pushing the boundaries of what is considered possible in sustainability, but also making space for imperfection. Sustainability is a sliding scale and it is always better to try something than nothing at all. While still holding businesses accountable, we believe that encouraging these gradual steps will build a greener future.
We have now printed a second issue, launched a web-version of the magazine, and created thoughtful merchandise which encompasses the values set out by AAV. Along this journey we recognised our responsibility to operate as sustainably as possible, while continuously striving to learn and do more. We have looked further inwards to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to adhere to high environmental standards. We have put thought into the ink, materials, web design — and even included instructions to plant the print magazine on the back page of this issue.
We put a lot of heart and soul into An Artist’s Vision and everything along the way. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we did making it!
AAV Team (Alicja, Chloe, Jonathan, Aurora, and Mieke).
When making An Artist’s Vision we have endeavoured to challenge existing practices and take sustainability into account at every step of the way. That includes the digital sphere. We challenged our web designer Aurora Saseta to build the most sustainable website possible, while maintaining AAV’s aesthetic. For more about her journey, read the interview here.
Green energy
First and foremost, our website is hosted by a server which is run on renewable energy. Krystal is run on 100% renewable energy and partners with other sustainable organisations such as Trees for Life, even pledging to protect and plant 1 billion trees by 2030. In addition, Krystal’s servers are based in the UK, just like the main readership of AAV. It has been proven that the less distance data has to travel, the less energy will be used in the process.
Font
Across the website, we use only one font in different sizes. News Plantin™ This is to minimise the size of our website’s data. Aurora has even edited the file code to remove any excess characters which will not be used such as foreign-language symbols, which halves the size of the datafile.
Dark mode
Perhaps the most important feature is our website’s ‘dark mode’. We have made sure to use darker colours throughout the website to minimise the energy used when viewing it. We have also tried, where possible, to use only a limited set of colours.
Images
Images are the most energy-consuming feature on a webpage, both because their large amounts of data are automatically downloaded, and also because they require higher brightness for viewing. Aurora has addressed this by applying a texturiser to all the images on our homepage, giving them a darker grainy feel. The result is that by reducing their quality, the images are significantly smaller in size, and by changing their colour scheme, they require less energy to be viewed on the screen.
Analytis
We use Cabin analytics which removes cookies and is 22x smaller than Google Analytics, using a fraction of the energy required to run it. Cabin has optimized their footprint and runs on renewable energy. Cabin even analyses each webpage’s CO2 usage over time, providing insights into our carbon footprint.
Clean code
According to this article on low-tech web design, the design of a website constitutes the majority of its energy use. This can be optimised by using native JavaScript to avoid external dependencies (i.e. minimising server requests). Another way to simplify the code is to limit the script to each page, so that no more script is loaded than necessary. Aurora has implemented these efficiencies as much as possible, as this is also an e-commerce.