Destroying the earth isn't cool campaign by Paris Ewing n11037181

Research:

NASA Global Climate Change

“Human activities (primarily the burning of fossil fuels) have fundamentally increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, warming the planet. Natural drivers, without human intervention, would push our planet toward a cooling period.”

"greenhouse effect"1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space. Certain gases in the atmosphere block heat from escaping. Long-lived gases that remain semi-permanently in the atmosphere and do not respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are described as "forcing" climate change.”

NOAA Climate.GOV

"Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.14° F (0.08° C) per decade since 1880, and the rate of warming over the past 40 years is more than twice that: 0.32° F (0.18° C) per decade since 1981."

"2020 was the second-warmest year on record based on NOAA’s temperature data, and land areas were record warm."

Similar Campaigns:

ACR Action for Climate Emergency

"ACE educates, inspires and supports young people to lead the fight for their future. We ensure they have everything they need to understand the science and advocate for solutions to the climate emergency."

Mock COP

"Mock COP26 is built on the idea of international collaboration of climate activists. Raising ambitions for a powerful conference statement to world leaders from the youth of the world."

Inspiration / Mood board:

Storyboard:

CAMPAIGN: DESTROYING THE EARTH ISN'T COOL

This campaign is to intrigue the 20th century, and to remind, educate, and spread awareness on Climate Change and the affects to our only planet. The storyboard presented below is how I vision the campaigns instagram posts to visually communicate. Comedic, Factual and Relevant.

Visual Strategies:

Visual Strategies- Each story is a linear narrative structure as the events are portrayed in the order the story occurs. The stories are spreading awareness and education about climate change and the global warming impacts on our earth. I’ve used a Comic Style in my storytelling, each slide of the Instagram posts is in order from start to end. The digital illustrations were designed to be simplistic with enough detail to identify characters and objects, for viewers to be drawn to the storytelling about the importance of the global issue.

Choice of storytelling style: Comic Style

Principles of design used- contrast in shapes between the illustrated earth and greenhouse gases. A circle represents unity and wholeness, and the overall shape is smooth without any sharp edges. Which makes the earth an inviting character who’s friendly to interact with. However, the greenhouse gases are shaped with spiked corners, which can communicate anger and aggression. The shapes visualisations help the reader to understand the characters clearly and understand which character is the focus of the story. Contrast in colour is the variety of colours making every illustration purposeful in the story and noticed. The layout was simplistic to avoid confusion as well as to make the storytelling clear. The similarity with all the posts is the structure, illustration style, layout, and text. Artistic mediums: digital illustration, flat design.

Sketches/ Scan /screenshots

Final Instagram posts:

Software Tech used (Tools and Techniques):

Software used to create the illustrations: Adobe Illustrator. I used curvature tool to create curved and straight lines into solid shapes. Then used type tool to enter text into speech bubbles for narrating. Lastly, a little bit of paintbrush tool to create brushstroke detail in some of the illustrations. It was time-consuming creating each shape to put together making one illustration, but I was able to utilise copy and paste functions of the first illustration and use for other posts.

Instagram:

Reflection:

This campaign utilises visual components to communicate to readers the importance of being aware and educated about the effects of Climate Change. Climate Change is a huge global issue and will remain that way for an extended period unless the acts of humankind change their ways. My thought process through the making of this campaign was to create a visualisation for readers that is familiar, relatable, and trendy. Which is the reasoning behind the Nike Air Forces shoes worn by the earth character. This component brings similarity to readers and an understanding that the time discussed is current. As a part of the 20th century, we are in a changing world that is exponentially growing, and with that our planet is changing too. This campaign not only shares information about Climate Change but also ways we can improve our habits and better our lifestyle choices. I profiled my earth character to display the emotions of heartbreak and sadness to show the effects of the human fingerprint on the planet and greenhouse gases invading. The greenhouse gas characters had to be portrayed as the villains of the story to provide education on greenhouse gases being the reasoning behind global warming. The greenhouse gas characters went through changes of their shape, from a variety of circles to sharp corned shapes. The reason for those alterations was to better profile the characters to visualise they aren’t a welcoming character to the story. A lot of design principles were considered through the design process to ensure the readers were able to recognise the narrative. Specifically, a certain Instagram post in the campaign exhibits the greenhouse gas characters realising their impacts to the earth. The greenhouse gases acknowledge the earths emotions and become aware that they are the ones at fault. I reflect upon this message, as it conveys to readers that the changing of our daily habits can reveal change to our planet’s circumstances. I believe the storytelling makes the education fun for readers, especially in a comic-style layout. Each post has a different illustration to keep readers entertained and intrigued with the storyline. But for what can be improved, I believe discovering other layouts of comic styles. The Instagram, post structure exhibits a slide show layout it made the transitions from each part of the story simple. If I was to investigate comic transitions further, I would split the slide in half by a divider to show more visuals. Inspired by action comics, showing immediate actions from characters. However, I believe the campaign does its job in storytelling and sends a message to readers that Climate Change is real and a global issue needing to be dealt with immediately.

References:

Action for the Climate Emergency ACE. 2022. Our mission, vision, values. [online] Available at: <https://acespace.org/about-us/#what-we-do> [Accessed 22 April 2022].

Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. 2022. The Causes of Climate Change. [online] Available at: <https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/> [Accessed 22 April 2022].

Climate.gov. 2022. Climate Change Global Tempretures. [online] Available at: <https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature> [Accessed 22 April 2022].

Greenhouse Agency. 2022. Amplifying youth voices on the frontline of the climate crisis. [online] Available at: <https://www.greenhouse.agency/case-study/amplifying-youth-voices-on-the-frontline-of-the-climate-crisis/> [Accessed 22 April 2022].

Mock COP. 2022. Home - Mock COP. [online] Available at: <https://www.mockcop.org> [Accessed 22 April 2022].

Nations, U., 2022. Climate Change | United Nations. [online] United Nations. Available at: <https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/climate-change> [Accessed 22 April 2022].