A Call to Action

Basing on feedback from the mid-project presentations, we had a task at hand of revising our design choices. As soil health was our area of interest in the Climate Change pool, we had more thought into where we would be next headed. We came up with three facts that would guide our next steps:

• Half of the worlds habitable land mass is used for agriculture.
• Healthy soil is like the planet’s lung - it breathes in the C02 we emit and processes it through its microorganisms and plant roots.
• Modern mass farming transforms nature into a factory - ripping diverse biospheres into single-kind food production, tilling the ground, and using fertilisers and pesticides. This destroys the soil which we described as the earth’s lung.

To expand further on those facts, most people are not aware of the fact that soil health matters for reducing C02 in the atmosphere and slowing down climate change. And many have no idea that their food purchases greatly influence global soil health. Positive impact is facilitated both through support of organic and regenerative farming practices by purchasing organic food and reducing transport emissions by purchasing local food. Modern agriculture has detatched the food we buy in plastic packaging from nature and it is time to turn this around.

Paving a way forward

We outined two ways in which we could make this complex message quickly understandable that included delivery of:

• A video campaign with a very visual reminder of nature in food shopping.
• A story website with educating about soil health with vivid, emotional characters and a central message: We’ve detached food from nature and it’s destroying our planet.

Creating a storyline

We realised the need for a more digestible storyline taking into consideration Creative Conscience’s vision for design that communicates positivity with some aspects of beauty as it is not all doom and gloom. Bearing that in mind, we watched some short animations for logical storyline inspirations and design direction.

Storyline conceptualisation

Our story board told a tale of a ladybug that flies in from the atmosphere polluted by carbon emissions into farmland and discovers that the soil has been polluted by chemical fertilisers in addition to poor farming practices. In addition are small earthworms exploring in the soil, but since the soil is no longer favourable, one of them pokes his head out of soil surface and meets the ladybug.

We made a transparent briefcase that would be known as Soil-box to visualise the effects of long term chemical use on soil health.

Following the tutorial, we put considerable focus on the grocery shopping experience that could engage the customers. Traditionally, supermarkets sell fruits and vegetables in plastic boxes and on shelves however, we wanted to tell a different story, maybe food should not be as clean at the time of purchase. We would then transform the shelves into miniature gardens. We would fill the boxes with soil and grow the vegetables on the shelves. Customers will then have to dig up the produce and put them in their baskets by themselves.

This would allow customers to not only experience the freshness of the fruits and vegetables but also make them more aware of the fact that the soil in the direct source of our food. "Make the food earthy" quickly became the main theme of the project.

Inception of the animations

Taking inspiration from animation videos we found online especially on YouTube that thankfully gave us an entertainment break, we learnt a lot about character development, environment setup and captivating storyline hooks and more.

Inspired by some of the animated interactive websites we visited, we aimed to incorporate animations into our website. So instead of abandoning the original storyboard, we made improvements of the original storyboard that as people navigated through a webpage, the animations on each page would go along with the mouse scrolling movement.

With just over a week left, we laid a plan on how we would execute the Soil Story project with resources most available and in close proximity to us. This included:

• Looking for and getting consent from a grocery store business owner.
• Making the soil boxes or containers.
• Getting plants, soil and vegetables to be placed in the containers.
• Filming on location.
• Completion of the interactive website.
• Making preparations for the presentation.

• Make it real for example a garden in the supermarket
• Visualise the food detachment from farming for example use of extremely clean food sometimes not-good-for-the-planet packaging
• Show a positive side that makes you feel passionate about taking Climate Change action.

Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture by Hannah Ritchie, 2019.