Marine Conservation Society
The Marine Conservation Society is a charitable organisation who works closely with businesses, governments and communities to clean oceans and protect sealife. The client’s request was to create unique graphic outcomes for a micro campaign which encouraged people to immediately stop the irresponsible recycling of single-use face masks during the Coronavirus pandemic.
In just 2020 alone, 1.6 billion disposable masks entered our oceans and it was estimated that they would take at least 450 years to biodegrade. As soon as I heard this, I wanted my micro campaign to urge audiences to feel guilty for their actions.
The idea behind tearing the sealife in half encourages the audience to choose a side - life or death. The left side of my illustrations exhibits the creatures in a healthy form, whereas the right side of my illustrations demonstrates what happens when the creatures swallow our masks. I then created the slogan “Your Survival is their Extinction. Which side will YOU choose?” to work alongside these graphic illustrations, persuading the audience to re-think their irresponsible recycling methods and disreputable littering habits.
The three sealife creatures I decided to illustrate for this micro campaign were a fish, a seagull and a turtle - the decision to include a seabird implies how you don’t even have to live in the ocean to ingest face masks, as they can also find them after being swept up onto beaches. Out of the three, the fish was the most important creature to use across this micro campaign because a lot of people don’t realise that when eating fish, we consume microplastics that they have swallowed in the ocean! To get a message across to audiences, sometimes the best way is to highlight how something might affect them personally, instead of how it is affecting the victims in the campaign, hence the slightly morbid illustrations! I was soon interviewed by BBC Hereford & Worcester Radio, where I discussed the importance of raising awareness on single-use face mask littering and what people can do to help.
Make a donation.
Although designers like myself are aiming to raise awareness through projects such as this, there is only so much we can do, but you too can make a difference. Donate an amount of your choice to the Marine Conservation Society today to help clean up our oceans.