Seeds of Tomorrow
Created in fall 2024 for ADN 502 (Advanced Visual Laboratory: Sequential Imaging)
For 8 weeks, the graduate students from ADN 502 combined with the students from MEA (Marine Earth and Environmental Science) 493, Climate Change: Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking. Our task was to use the research gathered by the MEA students to tell and visualize a story of an aspect and consequence of climate change to the general public. It was up to the design students to choose the appropriate media for the topic, whether that be an animation, graphic novel, children’s book, mural, VR experience, infographic, poster campaign, etc.
Final Product
Click on the following images to scroll through the respective iPhone and desktop Figma files.
Story Overview
Many climate change stories fail to resonate because they rely on heavy scientific language, lack human impact, or are too broad to feel relevant. People often struggle to care deeply about issues affecting distant places. Sensationalizing the problem can backfire—making it too bleak fosters hopelessness, while making it too positive suggests assured security—ultimately leading to apathy and a lack of change. The key to engagement is presenting the issue as personal, specific, and tangible as possible, while balancing urgency with hope.
I suggested using time travel to show both the characters in the story and our audience how today’s choices shape the future of climate change. By visualizing a dystopian future, we could inspire present-day action, which would in turn improve the future. Focusing on a specific geographic region of the United States and emphasizing human impact could make a global issue feel small and immediate. My group’s goal was not to convert skeptics but rather to highlight the urgency of climate change and inspire immediate action to mitigate its effects.
We established the following audiences:
- Primary: Low and middle class Americans in the midwest who care about climate change but don’t support or prioritize large-scale climate policies, instead voting with their pocketbooks and focusing on short-term goals.
- Secondary: Middle and upper class Americans in the midwest who believe in climate change but don’t think that its effects will impact them.
- Tertiary: Any American with an unclear picture of how climate change will impact agricultural and water resources and/or does not understand how expensive climate change impacts will be.
Plot Summary
Beginning: In 2100, a farmer in Illinois reflects on the environmental challenges facing their generational family farm. Comparing their grandparents’ notebooks, they note dramatic changes in soil moisture, precipitation, and crop yields. One day, researchers who have invented time travel approach the farmer, seeking individuals on the frontlines of climate change to travel back to 2025 and share their experiences with communities across the U.S.
Middle: The farmer travels back to 2025 and attends a town hall. The story shifts to the perspective of a skeptical audience member, representing the intended audience. Using a holographic projector, the time traveler vividly demonstrates the devastating impacts of climate change—flooding, droughts, sewage overflows, toxic algal blooms, and pests—while narrating their effects. When challenged by an audience member, the discussion moves beyond the impacts to focus on why they matter (costs) and what can be done (policy and action).
End: The story returns to the time traveler’s perspective. After spending a few weeks in the community, they move on to another rural town. While immediate, sweeping change seems unlikely, the traveler remains hopeful that their message will create ripples of awareness and action. Reflecting on the experience, the traveler shares, “We planted the seeds—now we wait to see if they grow.”
Message: The Midwest, especially its agriculture, faces severe climate impacts. Implementing climate policy now—both for adaptation and emissions reductions—saves a lot of money relative to the cost of climate change.
Media Format Brainstorming
Based on my skills and experience, and as we were developing the plot and theme of our story, I considered a variety of media. Those formats and why I didn’t choose them are listed below.
- Children’s story → not the audience we wanted
- Poster campaign → not suitable for a story with complex plot & characters
- Physical or online game (such as monopoly) → hard to focus on just one narrative, message, and audience
- Infographics / data visualizations → feels too science-y, preachy, and inaccessible to most people
- Interactive web article with different storylines based on predicted temperature increase → not enough available data for each possible temperature
- Zine → not feasible for region or country-wide audience
- Short story in magazine → readers are too few and likely in higher socioeconomic class than our intended primary audience
I ultimately decided on an online news article format because it is widely available, quickly spread, and easily fact-checked. I chose to mimic The New Yorker because it’s known for a combination of fictional works and investigative journalism, iconic illustrations, and progressive viewpoints. While its readers better match our secondary target audience, once it hypothetically disseminates to other news-sites—eventually to smaller, more local publications like Chicago Tribune and Star Tribune (in Minnesota)—it would be an effective way to reach our primary audience as well. I designed for mobile first, using an uncommon full-screen phone graphic to capture readers’ attentions.
