United Nations x The UnSchool
illustration-design-research-strategy
Illustration, Design, Research & Strategy
The Anatomy of Action was born out of a partnership project between the United Nations Environment Programme and The UnSchool of Disruptive Design to create an intervention that would help make sustainable living irresistibly. Our creative development approach sought to identify and communicate the most positively-impactful actions that any one of us can take, to add to the global movement around sustainable lifestyles to help achieve the UNEP’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Process
Using the Disruptive Design Method, we mined the opportunity of organically-growing global movements that advance sustainable lifestyles.
We conducted an extensive review of the scientific data over the last five years to cross reference what actions, when taken individually and accumulated across the globe, can and will have positive impacts on the health and sustainability of our planet.
A year of our collected data was synthesized into a list of 15 everyday actions across five everyday lifestyle areas to create a set of actions that, when amplified, make a tangible difference in the world. We then presented them these 15 actions a fun memetic reference of a hand and framed all the actions as positive gains, rather than negative losses.
Leyla at the Paris UNEP launch. The project launched with a UNEP global challenge of 15 actions in 15 days, in which individuals and social media influencers posted chosen actions.
One of the main creative and strategy goals was to make the illustrations and recommendations hackable so that influencers and general public could adapt them to their own context and language and broaden the reach of the sustainability outcomes beyond the predominant English data.
We encouraged them to adapt the provided graphics during the campaign from countries and in languages from around the world.
The campaign includes a dedicated website, over 100 hand-illustrated and developed pieces of shareable collateral, three campaign videos and an extensive data validation report that can be accessed here to explore the science behind the Anatomy of Action.
Over the 15 days, there were +19k views and +3,500 downloads of the data validation deck and graphics for posting from +100 countries. Since then, the UNEP has continued the campaign and reached over 4 million people in a wide variety of languages.
The campaign is on-going, and you can contribute with the #anatomyofaction hashtag.
Activating the hashtag at the launch in Paris
Video Component
We commissioned three videos to support the campaign from three different filmmakers, with three different goals. The first established the “what” (Locke Vincent), the second covered “how” (Brought To You By) and the third covered “why” (KTBO), the last of which was filmed in Mexico in three languages (Spanish, French & English).
Research + Recommendations
In addition to the illustrated versions of each of the recommendations, we also included text based versions with a year’s worth of scientific data we undertook to support the recommendations. These were included in the challenge asset kit to contribute to the validation of the actions, along with the data validation report.
Food
What we researched:
The impacts of fresh and packaged food waste, food production, embodied energy impacts from food, packaging, transport, gardening, citizen food production, farming techniques, food-sharing systems, organic waste, impacts of meat production, meat-free movements, etc.
Top three actions identified:
Protein Swaps
Use All Your Food
Grow Your Own
Stuff
What we researched:
The design and production of household consumer products, furniture, clothing, homewares, electronics, technology, cleaning products, landfills and end-of-life management, packaging, reduction, reuse, repair movements, plastic waste, circular economy, fashion. We also looked at movements around zero waste, minimalism, capsule wardrobes, anti-haul, consumption reduction, plastic free trends, etc.
Top three actions identified:
Beyond Buying
Fashion Slowdown
Ditch Disposables
Move
What we researched:
Banks, investing, divesting, consumption, impact investment, fundraising, micro-investing, home consumption and travel choices, trade-offs, energy providers, etc.
Top three actions identified:
Keep Active
Share Your Ride
Go Cleaner
Money
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Fun
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Hacked
One of the goals of this project was that anyone, anywhere, could take the graphics and information and use what makes sense in their own context and community, in their language of choice. We offered an open invitation to translate, adapt and personalize the challenge, the data, graphics, illustrations and actions of the challenge. To date, they are being shared in over 10 languages and formats, showcasing the passion and creativity of people from over 50 countries and counting.
