People tend to find consequences set in the future abstract and hard to relate to,

making climate communication easy to ignore. Important studies on climate projections, and the future state of the world, tends to drown in ever growing stacks of complex climate reports. Our main objective was to raise awareness by translating the reports on sea level rise into something more available and relatable to people.

In 1945, the United Nations unveiled its iconic logo – a map of the world, symbolizing a unified effort for global stability. But while the logo has stayed the same for 78 years, the world has certainly not. With the UN predicting a 2.9-degree increase in temperature by 2100, and the consequential sea level rise, the world as we know it is rapidly changing.

Based on UNs own prediction we climate changed their iconic logo, as a symbol of the one threat that truly should be uniting us all. The updated logo guidelines details changes made to a selection of affected areas, and the social, economic, and humanitarian consequences that follows.

Since the future of our planet is everybody’s business, we created a campaign made to be available for anyone to use to create awareness in the fight for more unified action on climate change.

All the elements in this campaign are based on the updated UN logo.

The communicative value and strength of the campaign lie in the simple graphics visual in contrast to the complex geographic consequences. By giving each pixel and vector point a new context and value, every minor adjustment in the design process gives a chilling effect.

In true design guideline fashion, The Updated Logo Guideline samples a selection of adjustments describing the reasons behind the updates, and the effect of “the design choices” made, using red as the color of correction.

In other words, the whole campaign is styled as a simple but ruthless design update of an iconic logo, ready for download.

To launch the project, we created a concept film around the UN's own Dennis Francis' recent appeal to the general assembly on sea level rise, using the logo update as a visual amplifier of his message.

In the first weeks we organically reached over 15 different countries from all parts of the world, generating 50+ (and counting) international editorial coverages.

With the assets available for download, people started taking ownership of the message. Some even translated all the material into Chinese, while others created their own take on the content based on the available assets, or published the material directly on their channels. This included environmental organizations, grassroots activists, politicians and influencers, as well as engaging designers all over the world.

During the UN Climate Conference in Dubai, COP28, the Nature Conservation Association (Naturvernforbundet) used the updated logo as a visual aid to highlight the dramatic consequences of climate change as a strong visual talking point, and a conversation starter in meetings with decision-makers, as well as distributing the material to conference attendees.

All on a zero budget. An initiative driven by passion.