Brand identity and communications strategy for Save the Arctic, a Greenpeace campaign to end oil drilling and industrial fishing around the North Pole.
My studio was chosen by Greenpeace to design a campaign identity and communications strategyfor Save the Arctic, a campaign to end oil drilling and industrial fishing around the North Pole. The challenge was to unify hundreds of discrete protests around the world with campaign material that articulated a cohesive environmental ambition.
To date 6.3 million people have joined the Save the Arctic campaign.
An open-source protest
With thousands of different activists invested in the campaign, our strategy was to turn Save the Arctic into an open-source protest — a global campaign that empowered every supporter to create professional campaign material as and when they needed it. To create an open-source communications pack, we created a font capable of generating any kind of campaign asset.
The Save the Arctic font
Built from scratch, our Save the Arctic font squeezed over 300 illustrations, symbols, letters and diacritics into a single 144kb file. With specific characters accessed via special key combinations, any software that supported a font file could be used to generate campaign material for Save the Arctic.
The Save the Arctic illustration pack
By increasing the type size, specialised characters contained within the font file could also be used as standalone illustrations.
Communication guidelines
The font was made available with a set of guidelines, giving Greenpeace activists around the world an on-demand tool to generate everything from banners to t-shirts on the fly.
Lasting impact
Since the font’s release Greenpeace activists have commanded the attention of the United Nations and disrupted Gazprom and Shell’s involvement in the Arctic region. In 2015 Save the Arctic’s communication pack was disseminated amongst activists fighting to free 30 individuals held captive by the Russian government. The resulting protests made headlines around the world.
As of 2019 the movement continues to impact the world stage.
