Pixel Parsimony: Designers’ Tactics to Curb the Carbon Load of Online Creatives

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-750-7_33How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital advertising; graphic design; carbon footprint; sustainability; energy efficiency; design awareness; digital emissions

Abstract

The focus of this paper is operational graphic design practice as a lever for reducing the energy and emissions burden of digital advertising assets. Following awareness sessions for participating designers and students, we coded the semi-structured virtual interviews (with NVivo support) to extract the design actions affecting data transfer and device processing meaningfully. The participants selected palette decisions, images/illustration choices, and asset size/resolution as the most significant variables within a designer’s control. The findings consolidate accountabilities into three tracks the awareness track, design measures track, and memorability track highlighting minimal element counts and right-sized files to enable lower operational impact. The abilities and information retained through a memory task provide evidence of having more success when retrieval is in demand. In essence, the paper argues that graphic design is much more than mere styling. In fact, graphic design is an applied sustainability practice. Further, it provides a quick checklist for low-carbon visuals across social feeds, banners and email formats.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Reshma Shinde
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/31
TI  - Pixel Parsimony: Designers’ Tactics to Curb the Carbon Load of Online Creatives
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Design, Manufacturing, and Sustainable Energy Systems (ICADMSES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 468
EP  - 476
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-750-7_33
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-750-7_33
ID  - Shinde2026
ER  -