Humans pumping out greenhouse gases for decades has had the effect of raising the planet’s temperature. One of the consequences of warmer temperatures is the melting of arctic ice and ever-increasing sea levels. According to a report from the 2017 UN Ocean Conference, climate-related natural disasters cost the world economy $520 billion and sends 26 million into poverty annually.
To visually represent how quickly arctic ice is melting, Helsingin Sanomat, the largest Nordic newspaper, has released a new typeface, Climate Crisis, and it's free for individual and commercial use.
The most obvious use cases are likely for media outlets communicating the urgency of the climate change crisis, as you can set the OpenType variable font to represent the level of sea ice that has melted into the ocean from 1979 to 2050. For projects where variable fonts are unsupported, a set of weights representing ice levels at 1979, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2019, 2030, 2040, and 2050 come into play. The data used to visualize the ice melt are from National Snow and Ice Data Center’s (NSIDC) data from 1979 to 2019 and projections to 2050 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”s (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
“These kinds of new methods of journalistic storytelling compliment our recent investments in data journalism. Yet, we don’t just want to keep it to ourselves, which is why we are giving it out for free and hope to see it in use elsewhere as well”, says Tuomas Jääskeläinen, the Art Director of Helsingin Sanomat, in a press release.
To learn more and download the font, visit www.TypeToAct.com.