Each January, NAVC hosts a large veterinary conference. For the 2024 show, they launched a new sustainability initiative. To announce this new initiative, NAVC wanted a small ad created for one of the conference booklets. A logo had been completed a few months prior, but no other graphics had been designed—so where to start?

Sustainability is a deceptively easy concept to grasp, but not all that easy to communicate visually—at least not in an original way. A quick search (because, of course, this ad needed to be designed fast) of stock photography for sustainability concepts resulted in a lot of overused images and concepts. There was, however, one image of a paw print made up of plants. I didn’t love the image, but it did get me thinking. Dogs. Paw prints.Paw prints fading away. Paw prints on a beach. Dogs on a beach.

I quickly located a stock image of two happy dogs running on a beach (and, really, is there such a thing as an unhappy dog running on a beach). After adding the headline “Leaving a Lighter Foottprint” the ad was perfect for a veterinary conference’s new sustainability initiative.