Brand identity and campaign strategy for Save the Arctic — a Greenpeace campaign to end oil drilling and industrial fishing in the Arctic region, ultimately mobilising 6.3 million people across dozens of countries.
Greenpeace commissioned the campaign identity and communications strategy for Save the Arctic — a global effort to end oil drilling and industrial fishing around the North Pole. The challenge was to unify hundreds of discrete protests happening simultaneously around the world with material that could articulate a single, cohesive environmental ambition.
6.3 million people have joined the Save the Arctic campaign.
An open-source protest
With thousands of different activist groups invested in the campaign across dozens of countries, the strategic decision was to make Save the Arctic an open-source protest — a global movement that empowered every supporter to generate professional campaign material independently, as and when they needed it. The solution was a custom typeface capable of producing any kind of campaign asset from a single font file.
The Save the Arctic font
Built from scratch, the Save the Arctic font packed over 300 illustrations, symbols, letters and diacritics into a single 144kb file. Characters were accessed through special key combinations, meaning any software that could use a font file — from Word to Photoshop to a protest banner printer — could generate campaign material. No design skills required.
The Save the Arctic illustration pack
At larger type sizes, the font’s specialised characters became standalone illustrations — polar bears, Arctic wildlife, protest imagery — giving activists a ready-made visual library that was always on-brand and always on message.
Communication guidelines
The font was distributed with a comprehensive set of guidelines, giving Greenpeace offices and individual activists around the world an on-demand tool to produce everything from protest banners to t-shirts — without needing a designer in the loop.
Lasting impact
Armed with the campaign system, Greenpeace activists commanded the attention of the United Nations and directly disrupted Gazprom and Shell’s operations in the Arctic region. When 30 activists were detained by the Russian government following a protest action, the campaign pack became the organising tool for a coordinated global response — protests in dozens of countries carrying the same visual identity, generating headlines worldwide and ultimately securing the activists’ release.
