Analysis and Comparison of Sustainable and Conventional Websites

The web and websites consume far more energy and resources than users realise. The web pollutes heavily and burdens the environment, which is precisely why a trend towards designing sustainable websites, or Sustainable Websites, has emerged in recent years. For comparison, she selected the company ** Lesema**, for which she also created a website as a product for her diploma thesis, and then redesigned it to make it more sustainable. In doing so, she relied primarily on the findings from the theoretical part of the diploma thesis. Naturally, she also focused on graphic elements here.

Problem

The web and websites consume far more energy and resources than users realise. The web pollutes heavily and burdens the environment, which is precisely why a trend towards designing sustainable websites, or Sustainable Websites, has emerged in recent years. Unfortunately, few people are still aware of this issue, so she decided to address this topic in her diploma thesis and thus bring it closer to a wider audience.

The first part of the diploma thesis is dedicated to explaining the problem of environmental pollution caused by the web, the trend of designing sustainable websites that began as a response to this issue, and the theoretical aspects of designing sustainable websites. As a student of the Graphic Design programme, she focused on graphic elements that make a website more sustainable: choice of typography, colours, photographs, use of animations and videos, etc. The second part of the diploma thesis is dedicated to the analysis of an existing sustainable website, Organic Basics. This section breaks down which graphic elements are those that make this website more sustainable than comparable websites.

Results

For comparison, she selected the company Lesema, for which she also created a website as a product for her diploma thesis, and then redesigned it to make it more sustainable. In doing so, she relied primarily on the findings from the theoretical part of the diploma thesis. Naturally, she also focused on graphic elements here. The main premise on which the diploma thesis is based is that by choosing the right design decisions, we can significantly contribute to reducing the size of a website.

How much emissions a particular website produces can be measured using an online carbon dioxide calculator, which is available at: https://websiteemissions.com, and which she herself used to measure the emissions of the selected sustainable website and the website she subsequently redesigned. By redesigning the product according to the graphic elements that make a website more sustainable, I believe that her product is more sustainable and environmentally friendly than conventional websites.

I hope that this diploma thesis will contribute to greater awareness of this topic.