Do The Green Thing
Tackling climate change through female artists
Do The Green Thing, a division of the Pentagram’s London Studio, seeks to tackle climate change through creativity to empower people to live greener every day. The organization wanted to turn their latest issue, “Man-Made Disaster,” into a physical and digital exhibit showcasing 30 female and non-binary artists’ perspective on gender norms and their intersection with our precarious relationship with our planet. We worked closely to conceptualize, design and build a digital exhibit to view the artwork, think differently about the issues affecting us all, and see the world through new eyes.
“Needing to combine a neutral space for the pieces, a voice for their artists, the disruptive premise of the exhibition and the punk-hack spirit of the brand, we felt it was a difficult brief to get right. But AREA 17 responded so well, combining a highly original exploration with a completely collaborative process, resulting in a site that was creatively spirited and user-perfect. Answering the brief so well was as much as we could ask. That they did so with a big team based in New York and Paris was very humbling, and gives me faith that the creative industry can play an important role in reversing the climate crisis.” — Naresh Ramchandani, Pentagram, Do The Green Thing
Man Made Disaster site is made with Twill, our open source CMS for Laravel.
We began unpacking Do The Green Thing’s brand which is rooted in conversation, delight, originality, and provocation and the central themes within the issue and the artists' work. We needed to create conversation and provoke as well as pin the powerful message on fact and rigorous data to be most effective. As a result, we created three distinct content modes - bite-sized content to understand the shocking insights, longer-form copy for more research and explanation, and a lexicon to create a shared understanding.
We needed to celebrate each artist’s perspective juxtaposed to the facts. We explored creative concepts of a journey moving people through various modes and narratives as well as the idea of a magazine allowing people to search through the plethora of views on societal issues. But when we explored the concept of “Artists Vs.” the artists were collectively standing up to the issue’s insights. Artists Vs. best fulfills Do The Green Thing’s brand attributes and mission to inspire people to imagine a better future.
“AREA 17 responded so well, combining a highly original exploration with a completely collaborative process, resulting in a site that was creatively spirited and user-perfect. ” — Naresh Ramchandani, Pentagram
The site features an immersive, destabilizing scroll that pits the artists and their works against urgent facts about climate change. The ticker in the site scrolls through facts as if on the NYSE, taking cues from one of the most stereotypically male-dominated industries, finance, as well as one of the most polarized mediums of today, news channels. The artist names shout at the same level as the scrolling bright green creating a dialogue of forces. In contrast to this loud experience, the artist page is a moment of calm creating a respite to peruse the artwork and understand the artist’s perspective.
The dynamic experience needed to have a back-end experience that was simple and easy to digest. A large amount of artist information needed to be easily navigable. The Do The Green Thing team needed an easy way to upload and move content around without process and complexity getting in the way. Our team built the site on the open-source CMS, Twill, a product of AREA 17. The CMS allowed our team to create a modular design system that was easy to update and built for flexibility. In addition to creating a website that celebrates female artists, the site was built by an all-female tech team.
