‘Endgame’ explores how social challenges produced by climate change can be visually communicated. The project has resulted in the design of educational tools and awareness ‘games’ at individual and community levels.
‘There is not enough land on the planet to grow enough bio-fuels to support our transport system’
‘If everyone on the planet lived like we do in London we would need three planets to sustain ourselves’.
Everyday in the media similar facts and figures are presented. Therefore, the challenge for the public is how to become pro-active rather than reactive to issues created by looming environmental shifts and the complex challenges of climate change.
This communication project is a response to an elective asking how contemporary visual culture could offer models responding to environmental challenges. Through discussions with different people and collaboratively developing design work for different eco-concerned organisations, this project generated design tools to re-think and re-interpret the challenges and develop more collective solutions.
As this project addresses a public issue, the user interaction phase was divided into three parts covering different levels. First of all, a public installation was shown at the Work-in-Progress show at the Royal College of Art in December 2007. ‘Free Gift Guaranteed’ contained a picture question book for visitors to fill in, which aimed to uncover the emotional reactions of people when faced with facts about our environmental situation. In return for their input, badges that had been designed with comments of climate change were given to the visitors as gifts and reminders of the challenges.
The other part of the interaction took place with selected community groups that are interested in tackling climate change collectively. A picture questionnaire for a primary school in Solvenia acted as a tool to get students to question their consumption and waste levels. More specifically, this project worked with design organisations such as EcoLabs to explore new ways to deliver messages of climate change through more engaging communication design.
On a broader level, attending different conferences such as Be The Change (Westminster Central Hall, London, November 2007), Climate Change Demonstration (London, December 2007), Positive Energy Conference (Findhorn Foundation, Scotland, March 2008) and meeting experts helped to expand the scope of the project. From understanding the problems of climate change to actions that have been taken, this interaction provided a holistic knowledge base of the subject for ideas and design development.
How to help people from different backgrounds to understand and define the complex issues of climate change? This communication project investigated different forms of public response to climate change. The design results are a series of communication tools that allow people from different backgrounds to explore the issues collectively:
