DLT–CMD (pronounced delete–command) is a unique community and ecologically-minded design collective working to change the role of brands and websites. They work to provide honest and simple branding and low-carbon websites.
As the founder of DLT–CMD, my aim with this brand and website was to put the manifesto created for a socially ecological design practice into action. I sought to design a simple and honest brand that lends itself well in a sustainable website. Each webpage is simple and clear as to emit as little carbon as possible. Ultimately, this brand and website serves as a model for all future work for this collective.
The logo is two unicodes of keyboard keys (delete and command). By having a logo that can be copy and pasted, rather than an image or a vector, I was able to reduce the size of each page on the website.
The colour scheme is 3 colours, an off-white, a deep brown, and a tomato red. By having less colours, we are able to code an easily understood user experience. Red functions as both an accent and a crumb that users can follow through a narrative story or to be directed to another page. The better users are able to navigate our site and our content, the less time they'll have to spend browsing and loading pages.
This brand uses two fonts, serif and sans serif. The actual names of those fonts will change from system to system. On most devices it will be seen as Helvetica and Times. By using default system fonts, we can reduce the size of our page by omitting linking or downloading custom fonts. It was also a great challenge in making default fonts look great and intentional.
For the site, all visuals are done through simple illustrations exported as SVG files. This kept the file sizes small, which reduced the overall page size and load time. For any instances where images were required, we either dithered them or used image compressing tools to reduce the size.
By building the visual identity carefully and with consideration to how it will translate for a sustainable web platform, we were able to create this site with an average page size of 0.16g. According to Carbon Calculator, this site on average is ~85% cleaner than most sites online right now.
