Ted's Countdown initiative is a global campaign accelerating solutions to help turn ideas into action regarding the climate crisis. The goal is to create a world that's cleaner, safer, and fairer for everyone by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and taking action on the climate. It's a movement that involves everyone, from children to their grandparents.
As the world is getting closer and closer to impending doom, it's easier to tune the problem out and regard it as an issue for future generations. Of course, if we made changes today, we wouldn't have to worry about the future.
The &Walsh team, with creative direction by Jessica Walsh, has created the branding for the initiative that you can't ignore. Developed for this year’s Countdown event in October taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland, TED speakers will outline their vision of a net-zero future. It's impactful, eye-catching, and, honestly, full of scary truth. With copy like "Cause of death: apathy" and "When we rise, the temperature doesn't" gets paired with the urgent branding colors of black and yellow, and your eye-line has nowhere else to go. The inspiration of the flip-clock within the typography further continues to prove that time is of the essence.
“People are used to drowning out climate change warnings,” Walsh said about the project. “Every day, we are inundated with news from scientists, yet most of us don’t take action. In order to get people to pay attention, we started our campaign visuals last year with alarming and shocking messaging like ‘We give up’ or ‘We love natural disasters anyways.’ Signed by TED, we felt it’d be hard to ignore these messages. After commanding people's attention, we then created messaging that inspired people to turn their fear into action. We want people to know it’s not too late if we act now.
The &Walsh team is proving that we need to hear the hard truth. We need someone to inspire us to take action immediately because it isn't too late if we do something now.
Besides, no one’s really into mass extinction anyway.
