Design a means of better communicating and or revealing the inherent value of water so that people improve their understanding of water as a limited natural resource and commodity.

One of the first areas that comes to mind when trying to save water is within the home. Slight changes in habit such as switching off a tap while brushing your teeth could save thousands of gallons of water a week. To start off my research i began to investigate what are the water sources around our houses.

After looking into our relationship with the water companies and the ways we can acess it from the house i thought it suitable to research some facts into home consumption and waste. Here are some of the facts I have found:

On average, 10 gallons per day of your water footprint (or 14% of yourindoor use) is lost to leaks. Short of installing new water-efficient fixtures, one of the easiest, most effective ways to cut your footprint is by repairing leaky faucets and toilets.

If you use a low-flow showerhead, you can save 15 gallons of water during a 10-minute shower.

All of those flushes can add up to nearly 20 gallons a day down the toilet. If you still have a standard toilet, which uses close to 3.5 gallons a flush, you can save by retrofitting or filling your tank with something that will displace some of that water, such as a brick.

Nearly 60% of a person’s household water footprint can go toward lawn and garden maintenance.

The average pool takes 22,000 gallons of water to fill, and if you don’t cover it, hundreds of gallons of water per month can be lost due to evaporation.

Traveling from Chicago to Istanbul is just about 10,000 miles round trip, costing enough water to run electricity in the average American home for one person for more than five years.

-National Georgaphic

Rain Positive

Rain Positive aims to persuade people to look at rain in a different way. Unique printing process is employed so that posters could only reveal their message when exposed to rain.

As part of my research I always wanted to do some studies on the physical properties of water. Playing and testing the materials that I am going to work with is something I not only find vital to informing my decisions for my final piece but also the part of the process I enjoy the most. The first images in this set of tests were created by playing with rain guard spray designed for shoe protection and normal paper. I was attempting to achieve some sort of invisible way to manipulate liquids on a surface. One of the possible outcomes for this technique could be to create some graphic visuals with only the use of water. By masking off the areas I wanted the water to remain in I could later simply sprinkle liquid onto the surface and it would eventually creep into the untreated sections. Using the same technique I then went on to testing if I could leave a print once I had removed the water or if it had been shaked off. By using coloured sugar paper I achieved just this. When wet I found the coloured paper darkened by a couple shades and would leaved a ghost print of the water droplets. My second test was to see if I could make ink on a paper travel over time. I found the methods I had used not too successful as I was hoping to be able to separate the different components of the inks. Finally I started to look into water in its different forms and experiment with light and colour through ice. To create the coloured ice I laid down some red acetate under the ice block and then photographed it by placing a lamp underneath in a dark environment.

This questionaire helped in my understanding of why people value their collections. I learnt that qualities such as: quantity, rarity, age, edition, design, story and emotional attachment are different aspects which ad value to a collection.

To better understand the concept of value and what we truly appreciate the idea of looking into personal collections came to me. What better way to investigate objects that an individual finds important and why? I used to theme to first dissect our relationship with a collection of objects and then applied what I had learnt to my own version of a collection. To begin with I had a random collection of people fill out a questionnaire I had specifically designed to find out why they found certain objects important to them. Questions such as “why do you collect” and “do you have any special pieces” precisely highlighted this area. I learnt that qualities such as: quantity, rarity, age, edition, design, story and emotional attachment are different aspects which ad value to a collection. I then wanted to see how I could apply these characteristics to water and if it was possible to attach what we generally assimilate to be precious about a collection to water, therefore exploring the concept of value. In doing so could I then communicate information to the end user in a form they would find familiar and second nature to understand. The collection devices I had designed were done so with the specific intention of being able to collect the water samples and document all the information on the go. The same containers would then be used to display the samples with the details about them easily read. Information which I considered definitely had to be on display for it to work was: location, date, the source of the water and the edition. The location would be marked by a simplified map of london i have designed placed on the top of the containers. The rest of the information can be filled out on the back using the water to magnify the writing.

SOUTHKENSINGTON

KENSINGTON

KNIGHTSBRIDGE

PIMLICO

CHELSEA

WORLDSEND ESTATE BATTERSEA

PARKSTOCKWELL

VAUXHALL

LAMBETH

WATERLOO

BANKSIDE

TEMPLECOVENTGARDE N

HOLBORN

REGENTSPARK

MARLYBONE

MARBLE ARCH

ST. GEORGE’SFIELDS

HYDE PARKKENSINGTONGARDENS

BAYSWATER

VICTORIA

WESTMINSTER

MAYFAIR

WHITEHALL

Having so far been working on small testers and one main concept I now had to focus on what I wanted to communicate. Its obvious when looking back at the brief that i have to give water some value. Make it seem important. But the real challenge is to engage the end viewer without sounding too “preachy” or “green”. I wanted this project to actually be something which manifested itself in a public space so that more people would be able to see it. This would not only guarantee plenty of exposure but would also mean id have to make sure i could engage a large variety of people to spread my message about how important water actually is. When i started thinking about public water spaces and large lakes i then put myself in the shoes of the water source and thought about what it would be saying to us if it could talk. Would it be dissapointed or angry at how we’d been using water? I approached this concept from a light-hearted and slightly childlike angle by putting myself in the shoes of the water and thought about what it would be saying to us if it could talk. Keeping with the simple and childlike theme and using the techniques I learnt from my initial experiments I created the “look what you’ve done” concept and brand.

This set of images are the first testers I did to see what the animated puddles could look like. I wanted to keep the shapes which would make up the features (like the eyes and mouth) crude. The combination of them floating aroundand goofy shapes have some sort of childish, goofy and fun element which im attracted to. Its this childish and goofy vibe which set the tone for the rest of the branding for the whole of the campaign. After testing out some papers and water I was able to move onto the graphics and the visual elements for the final piece.

Part of the challenge of the faces being in public spaces is to inform the end viewer while at the same time intreague them. For this to happen I would want there to be some sort of digital link on the spot so that the viewer, who will be intreagued by the angry face on the water, will be able to find out more about what it means. To create this digital link in an analogue environment I began looking into my suroundings and thinking of android phones and how i can use this to my advantage. Having spotted a sign from a changing room (image on the next page) in an Urban Outfitters store on the highstreet I started thinking about photographing and tweeting as a way of spreading information. This train of thaught also lead me to start thinking about bar codes and QR codes. After doing some research into these i realised that i could easily direct someone to a website withouth having them physically type in any webpage domains. I also realised that these QR codes could be modified and changed a certain amount and still be recognised. To make sure that a phone would be able to recognise a code at an angle though i had to test this out in a real scale. When testing the QR code in space i looked into distances, angles and even if the code was rotated. I wanted to make sure that if the code was floating around it would still be able to be scanned by the end viewer. I even looked into modifying colours and patterns onto the code to see if it could still be recognised.

Working on the logo was a long process for me. I knew from the beggining that pure graphic design is not my favourite thing so i picked up some tips from someone i knew who was better at it. I was told to always have a strong concept you want to communicate and to not be affraid to follow whims and experiment. Both these things i do already when working on my project! So i tried to apply it to the logo. When thinking about what it was i wanted to communicate with the easthetic i boiled it down to these points:- has to be legible from a distance- should look good both big and small- fun, goofy and childlike theme- water is another theme- anger or shouting is the tone- has to work with a QR code- if its two colour it should have a black and white alterantaive. In the next couple of pages i have shown some of the steps and stages i went through to achieve my final logo.

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For the interim exhibition in March 2013 at LCC I wanted to have something physical that the viewers could take away with them. I decided to make a series of packs which would make the faces for the puddles. These would serve as buseness cards and along side the images of the angry puddles, the QR code and the website they should hopefully be able to understand what the campaign is about. To make the packs I first had to create the images of the face parts on illustrator. Then have them laser cut so that they could easily be removed from the template. Once that was completed i screenprinted the templates and packaged them to be handed out. The following images are a combination of pictures from the process of making the packs, the packs and the show. -