ALARM& TheRoleDesigners CanPlayInCrafting ClimateChange Narratives

This article could begin with a flurry of frightening numbers about firestorms and ice caps, about polar bears and polarized politics, about climate refugees and refusals to act. You could read on as I quote the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, and at any moment you would see yet another terrifying figure denoting the shrinking number of years the proverbial and rhetorically united ‘we’ have remaining to… what is it now? Take action? Change course? Adapt?

Give in?

The words are tired. The numbers overwhelm us. The data and reports rain in. The fuel continues to burn. The climate continues to warm.

The scientific method is designed only to tell us about reality as it is, into. Vainly, it implores the world, with each yet more dire fact or figure, to care. But that same scientific method has shown us that the human brain does not operate on or respond to facts. depend; another between conveying accurately the quantifiable scientific reality and finding an angle on it that fosters emotional poignancy and relevancy in the audience. the audience are paramount. Research has shown that the human brain is wired for stories. People respond to narratives about climate change, not facts. Moreover, politics, not scientific understanding, shapes which narratives appeal to them. More conservative viewers, for example, respond more strongly to technocratic or marketbased narratives about our ability to overcome climate change with human ingenuity. They also respond to narratives about the fight between purity and impurity, and the struggle to protect the pristine status of “God’s Green Earth,” rather than those that focus on harm to humans or charismatic megafauna. objective by design, and the earnest perspective of the climate scientist is that the data should speak for itself, without ornamentation. But a designer is the intermediary of communication, taking raw data and sharpening it so it can be used to target an audience with a specific rhetorical goal in mind. Someone who can effectively marry hopeful imagery with quantifiable facts, or apocalyptic imagery with a message of human achievement and resilience is able to craft the complex and empirically analyzing in ever more exhausting detail, the exact shape of the hole we continue to dig ourselves deeper

A recent paper in The Journal of Climate Change and Health found that anger about the climate predicted both better mental health and greater engagement around climate issues, both in personal behaviors and activism. Both anxiety and depression related to the climate were less connected to action, and less emotionally adaptive for individuals. Everything being doom and gloom only fosters apathy-- if the world is going to end anyway, why should you care? So you instead have to fight back against the nihilism with a healthy dose of righteous fury.

Unlike science, the creative professions are built around telling stories. By teaming up with scientists and processing the data, designers and artists are already helping craft narratives about the past, present, and future that distill reality into emotionally accessible and actionable tales.

To act, people must simultaneously understand the situation rationally and feel emotionally that it matters to them; they must feel both urgency and agency, both alarm and hope. An earnest designer–hoping to communicate effectively about this issue–must thus walk two thin lines: one between conveying the dire nature of the current climate emergency and cultivating that thread of hope upon which action must

How to get to this feeling will depend greatly on demographic and cultural context-- and sometimes the optimal means of communication might come as a surprise. According to research by Rebecca Green, of UNSW Sydney, graphic design has a potent impact on the trust placed in, and effectiveness of, a message. While cleaner, informationheavy, positive messages about climate change and other environmental issues seem like they should effectively foster both hope and understanding, messages that evoked fear and disgust were seen as more trustworthy. These messages were being perceived as coming from a more grassroots source, rather than corporate or governmental. Furthermore, separate research has shown that facts and information play little to no role in changing minds or evoking action in an average viewer.

More influential than the facts and figures, politics and demographics of

For example, The Living Data Project attempts to merge scientific and artistic approaches to understanding the world, creating space for emotional engagement with the empirical. Photographer and artist Chris Jordan has spent years documenting environmental calamities and his famous series “Running the Numbers” distills the astronomical quantities associated with issues such as consumerism, public health, and the climate into emotionally poignant collages. Similarly, Massachusetts artist Jill Pelto takes facts and figures about climate change and turns them into dynamic paintings that simultaneously convey information and emotionally depict both the positives and negatives in the fight against climate change.

Those with a scientific mindset are wary of anything that feels like an argument, or smacks of propaganda. Science is overwhelming reality of climate change into emotionally accessible and tailored narratives.

American design legend Milton Glaser famously described design as “the process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one.” It is about changing the status quo with something as simple as a typeface, evocative imagery, or a color choice. Design is shaping the world to have people see your point of view.

And with that comes power. So use it. Tell a story about something beautiful, something precious, something hopeful, and about the villains that want to tear it down.

Make someone angry. Make someone act.

There isn’t time for anything else anymore.