Grand designs to save the planet

In a BBC documentary about climate change aired April 2019, Sir David Attenborough warned, "The scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies.”

In the same year, Extinction Rebellion, a UK-founded global environmental movement launched a Declaration of Rebellion which led to tens of thousands of people engaged in non-violent protests and the UK parliament declaring a Climate Emergency. 

The following year, its rebel partner Ocean Rebellion was launched to highlight a multitude of marine issues to remind us that, as the lungs of the Earth, the ocean forms the largest part of the climate and nature crisis but receives the least attention.

Since these movements however, progress has been slow, with COPs proving to be cop-outs and green legislations even being reversed, but the environmental messaging remains clear. 

With a highly recognisable logo designed by a street artist who wishes to remain anonymous, and colourful dynamic branding, Extinction Rebellion and Ocean Rebellion have used eye-catching visual communications to keep the conversations about extinction out there. 

The Extinction Rebellion movement has always been at pains to apologise for any disruption its peaceful civil disobedience causes.

The intention of Extinction Rebellion – to help save the planet and the human race – couldn’t really be more serious. How did you set about marketing its messaging?

CLIVE RUSSELL: The story behind the look and feel of Extinction Rebellion (XR) begins a long time before XR. In 2011 This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll, the agency I co-own, decided to stop pitching for free. We were spending 60% of time pitching, often for work we didn’t want to do. We replaced this 60% of time with 50% of time working for free.

We named the movement precisely [as] it needed to cover the whole of the issue, not just the carbon part… It’s a rebellion against our own extinction.

This opened us up to different working relationships filled with great collabs and brilliant people – this doesn’t earn you much money but it does open your eyes to a different way of working. And it helped us understand how design can make difference.

It was this experience, and the fact we were working with a great group of likeminded people (no one person did the Extinction Rebellion work, it was done collectively), that helped us communicate the existential threat of extinction.

The visuality of the movement was friendly, we used a lot bright colours, we channelled the work of the Arts and Crafts movement by using wood-cuts.

 This is also why we named the movement so precisely – it needed to cover the whole of the issue, not just the carbon part, and it needed to remind people they are a part of nature – It’s a rebellion against our own extinction, an extinction bought about by ourselves and by own addiction to production and consumption. 

The skull imagery references death and extinction but is balanced by the soft pastel colour palette of the XR 'branding'.

How did Extinction Rebellion messaging strike a balance between being alarming, while encouraging engagement with the issues?

CR: The initial idea behind Extinction Rebellion was to drive a wedge into the political agenda, the point was to raise the alarm. But, and this is often overlooked, the visuality of the movement was friendly, we used a lot bright colours, we channelled the work of the Arts and Crafts movement by using wood-cuts (not real images of dead animals) and we used traditional common language in our communications. 

We needed the alarm part but we mixed in a sense of inclusivity to let people know we’re all in the same boat (and they could join us).

Can you tell us more about the movement’s in-house art group of artists and designers?

CR: In May 2018 the ‘in-house’ group, named the Arts Group in reference to the ‘Artelier Populaire’ [Popular Workshop of the Paris uprising in May 68], was four of us. We met regularly at our London studio and devised a plan. From the beginning we knew we wouldn’t be able to deliver the huge amount of work needed to make the difference XR wanted to make, so we needed to create a toolkit anybody could use – many hands make light work. 

I’m often asked what I think to some of the ’terrible designs’ people have created with our tool kit… I don’t understand this question – to think the work we did was a service to design is to miss the point.

We started with a basic tool kit – logo, font, colours and wood-cuts – and used this to do making workshops for flags and banners. These workshops also gave us an opportunity to recruit artists and designers. And, after XR’s Declaration of Rebellion at Parliament Square in October 2018, more recruits flooded in. We also used these first actions to stress test the work we’d done, expanding tool kit further. And our four person Art Group began to expand very quickly.

The Extinction Rebellion logo features a sand timer image, indicating that time is running out, but also borrows from the original anarchists' Circle A logo (above) established in global youth culture in the 1970s.

In February 2019 we released the tool kit as a ‘Design Programme’ for free download – anyone could use it but only for the purpose of ‘planet saving’. 

Behind this decision was a deeper thought, I explained in the book Post Branding by Jason Grant and Oliver Vodeb: “Transparent and freely available design processes allow anyone to express themselves within a consistent framework. How do you express yourself differently within a society that values material wealth over everything else? You give your work away for free. It really is that simple.”

Being able to express yourself visually and performatively is a way of dealing with the darkness.

I’m often asked what I think to some of the ’terrible designs’ people have created with our tool kit (most people who use it aren’t designers)?

I genuinely don’t understand this question – to think the work we did was a service to design is to miss the point. The point of the work was to inspire people to use our tools, include them in the production of the work – have fun. 

After all the subject matter is very dark – being able to express yourself visually and performatively is a way of dealing with this darkness. Whenever I see a design using the font we made, the colours, the wood-cuts I’m overjoyed – it’s very humbling to see your work pass through so many hands.

Ocean Rebellion stages theatrical 'art bombs' that communicate sorrow at the destruction of marine life.

Talk us through the design of the highly recognisable XR logo, with its stylised sand-timer.

CR: The Extinction Symbol pre-dates Extinction Rebellion, it was designed by street artist ‘ESP’ in 2011 to mark bio-diversity loss.

We used the symbol with their permission adding a logotype with the movements name. The logotype is also designed to show the downward slope of Extinction and the uphill surge of Rebellion – it mirrors the nature of ‘egg-timer’ symbol while hinting at a positive way forward.

Can you tell us more about inspirations behind the branding, you’ve sited such influences as Eduardo Paolozzi , retro, “analogue” feels from the 50s, and symbols from the Paris riots in the 60s.

CR: Can you tell us a bit more about the commodification of protest graphics?

I’m not a fan of the term ‘branding'. When we ‘brand’ something we claim ownership over that thing – cattle is branded for instance (slaves were branded too). This brand mark tells people that the thing is not common property, it is owned by someone. 

In the case of the work we did for Extinction Rebellion it is not owned by anyone, it is free to use, it exists in the ‘commons’. Today everything is commodified and turned into a consumer product at a rapid rate, this destruction and belittling of our shared identities is driving poor mental health, our sense of self and belonging is being undermined by corporate greed, this has to stop – it is killing us.

The typeface ‘FucXed Caps’ began life as a digitally designed font but also gets hand painted onto banners and turned into printing blocks.

By starting from a point of common ownership we looked into movements who applied similar thinking in the processes they used, like the ‘Artelier Populaire’ who freely created hand-printed posters and pasted them out onto the streets of Paris – reclaiming the streets for the people. 

Likewise we used both digital and analogue processes to inform our work. The most obvious example is the wood-cuts. They begin life as direct printing blocks but the images they create are digitised, this means more wood blocks can be manufactured (at lots of different sizes) allowing groups to work together and hand print at scale. 

This constant movement between analogue and digital makes the work distinctive. And because it exists in both ‘worlds’ the look remains consistent while remaining playful.

This process is also used for the typeface ‘FucXed Caps’ but in reverse. It began life as a digitally designed font but also gets hand painted onto banners and turned into printing blocks. 

This constant movement between analogue and digital makes the work distinctive, more timeless. And because it exists in both ‘worlds’ the look remains consistent while remaining playful – one of the things we really wanted to avoid was a staid and ubiquitous ‘brand’, like the ones our high street and internet are filled with. 

Eduardo Paolozzi is an artist who also used manufacturing processes a lot. When Paolozzi used screen printing in the late 50s - 60s he did it to make large editions of prints. He did this to make it affordable – when you print an edition of several 100 (even 1,000s) the cost drops dramatically. Making art and design accessible to everyone is really important. So for me process is really important, it is only through collaborating that we can unlock one another’s potential.

Ocean Rebellion's projections and protests.

The demise of the ocean is the most significant part of the climate and nature crisis but receives the least attention, how is Ocean Rebellion getting the message out? 

DAVE BELL: The ocean regulates the climate, absorbs carbon, supports most life on Earth. Not everyone realises that, so there's a major blindspot.

As we say with Ocean Rebellion messaging, 'as the sea dies, we die.'

David Attenborough is marking his 99th birthday by releasing a film, Ocean, and rightly claiming that industrial fishing is ‘draining the life out of our oceans’ and should be made illegal. Meaning, it often resurfaces as a pivotal concern.

But our connection to the ocean, on a human level, is broken, which creates distance. Yet we rely on it completely and absolutely.

As we say with Ocean Rebellion messaging, 'as the sea dies, we die.'

Images of vomiting oil-heads or drowned merpeople get to into the news cycle quicker.

Many corporations and organisations see the oceans as a space to plunder not protect. Our job is to shift that perspective completely. It’s about cutting through the noise and obfuscation by using cultural disruption to get the subject to the top of the news agenda or in front of policy-makers.

Describe the ethos behind Ocean Rebellion’s ‘art bombs’.

Talking about ocean degradation and biodiversity loss can easily get drowned in statistics and gloom. Ocean Rebellion gets the message across through artful provocation.

Art and surreality is very disorientating.

Theatrical interventions that act as a more creative framing of the issues while sidestepping censorship and suppression. Images of vomiting oil-heads or drowned merpeople get to into the news cycle quicker.

And they act as gateways into more complex issues to do with industrial shipping, farmed fishing, heavy fuel oil, bottom trawling, and so on. Also, art and surreality is very disorientating and hard to deal with if you're a buttoned up CFO or politician only interested in numbers. 

Would you say the branding has worked? Or has the worrying trend for climate crisis oblivion/denial and legislation against non-violent protest worked against the movements?

CR: Extinction Rebellion has successfully raised awareness around the Climate Crisis, Ocean Rebellion is doing the same in the marine space. Until recently the UN International Maritime Organisation wasn’t going to ‘look’ at shipping emissions until 2030, because of our pressure and great work from other NGOs, it’s doing it now (all though too timidly for us).