After one Australian branding agency discovered its website produced more carbon than the average webpage, it redesigned it to be more efficient. In the process, the agency learned something about striking the right balance between sustainability and style. MEK is a Melbourne studio that’s worked with clients like the conservation groups WWF Australia and Sea Shepherd. During a trivia night in 2022, its team learned that sending 100 emails has a bigger carbon footprint than driving one kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) in a car. That surprising statistic led the agency to audit its own website and learn that it produced more carbon than 76.5% of web pages tested on the online Website Carbon calculator. Websites can be made more sustainable by design, and there are even some digital fonts that use less energy than others. Digital technology is estimated to account for 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, according to the Shift Project, a think tank. Reducing that through a more sustainably designed web is not just better for the planet, it’s a faster experience for the user too. To go about redesigning its website, completed in 2023 and updated this year, MEK first examined what was making it score so poorly on the carbon calculator. The agency’s homepage had a looped slideshow that included seven full-screen images and white backgrounds that looked clean but were more energy intensive than dark mode. It also found unnecessarily duplicated HTML tags that slowed the site down. There were several changes MEK could make to its site, but some came with aesthetic considerations—no small matter for any branding, creative, or design agency that uses its web page to showcase its taste and personality and wow and inspire potential clients. For MEK, striking the right balance between efficiency and design considerations was especially tricky when it came to font selection. Agency employees tried different fonts, shifting from the smart, confident sans serif Monument Grotesk t

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