Nature Unfiltered; bringing awareness and action to sustainability

Sustainability and the climate crisis are topics that are not talked about enough. There are plenty of things individuals and large groups can do to help, and I feel as graphic designers, we can have a huge impact on the education of this.

For my senior thesis, I chose to take two approaches to bring awareness to the overall concept of sustainability.

The first approach I took was a very passive, light hearted approach. My goal was to see what I could create just reaching the surface level of awareness. I created posters, post cards and bookmarks with very organic, hand drawn designs that felt very calm and inviting to the eye and finished it with subtle, meaningful text.

The second approach I took was a much larger leap forward. I took a more aggressive route with my tone of voice but kept my design style fairly similar. I cleaned up my lines, added a few more colors to my palette, and really tried to play with the fun, movement qualities of 70’s design which is where I took a lot of my inspiration from, based off of my research. I wanted my designs to catch the eye first and then grab peoples attention with my words.

I finished my second and final approach by physically creating all of my products to sell and displayed them at our thesis show. I created my own version of 70’s feeling product photos to show off the cohesion of the work. All profits made from these products were donated to the Pound+ Program which helps to collect millions of pounds of trash out of the oceans.