The Future of fisheries, a wake up call
I created an explainer video about the complex scientific research on the growing risk for fishery conflict to use as a communication tool
for practitioners and to raise awareness for a wider audience.
CLIENT Jessica Spijkers, Doctor in Sustainable Science - Stockholm Resilience Centre
YEAR 2020
MY ROLE Script writing - Art direction - Design - Animation - Sound design
DELIVERABLES Explainer video
Challenge
Scientific research plays an important role in our society but too often it stays inside the academic world. Our mission was to create a visual communication tool to bridge that gap between the scientific community and the rest of the world by making the complex science more digestible. Jessica's research focuses on international fishery conflict, it's complex and doesn't make for light reading material. That's where I came in. My challenge was to viually translate the complexity behind it, to make it more understandable and engaging as a tool and to convey a sense of urgency. The core message: we need action and we need it now.
"As an academic, I often struggle with how to best communicate my results to a broader audience and increase the societal relevance of my work.
Academic papers often fail to attract attention beyond our immediate peer groups, which can decrease the impact of our research significantly.
This was an issue I wanted to confront head-on, and decided to do so by collaborating with a designer to visualize the ideas and results of my work."
Jessica Spijkers
Solution
I created a 2'5" animated explainer video where I visualized the complexity of the science with the help of metaphors into an understandable
and engaging story that can be used as a communication tool for practitioners and policy makers to reach the wider audience.
Process
First things first, the script. This was a collaborative stage where we set a solid foundation for an engaging story to effectively convey the core message.
This was a challenging task where we had to simplify the research into a compelling narrative whilst still staying true to the science.
COLLABORATING ON THE SCRIPT
Secondly I sketched out the storyboards to show how the script would be visualized, scene by scene. The use of metaphors was important in this project,
as a tool to translate the complexity into something that was easily understood for people with no specific background in oceanic science.
STORYBOARDING PHASE
Next I moved on to creating a style direction where I put together a mood board, carefully picked the color palette and designed a few style frames to demonstrate what it would look like in the final video.
A few words on style
Abstract shapes can be thankful tools to conceptualize complex ideas and thus lend themselves perfectly for this project. I worked with organic textures to add depth and help narrate the story. Because of the serious message of the video, I wanted the colors to be grounded strongly in reality. Therefore I opted for earthy tones in combination with solid blues, adding in green and yellow to emphasize certain things.
MOOD BOARD
COLOR PALETTE
FROM SKETCH TO STYLE FRAME
When we had a go on the style direction, I created all the style frames, from illustration to final texture.
Finally I moved on to animation where I put all the designed frames into motion which really made the story come to life, an enjoyable process!
To set the right mood for the video, I collaborated with Jessica and her team in Stockholm for sound design, making sure we picked the right song and recorded a professional voice over.
Watch the final animation here
Final result
Result
Seeing her research in a new light showed Jessica how powerful a well-designed communication tool can be and how it can help her research make further impact in the world and reach a wider audience. The video will now be used as a communication tool for practitioners and policy makers who will work with it to create change in the world and build a better future. Weʼre excited to see how the video impacted their work on fishery conflicts, so watch this space for more info on that!
"The results are not only visually stunning, but they also communicate my message in a much more powerful way than I could have hoped for. Coralie has been able to create the immediate impact I was looking for not only among my academic peers familiar with my research topic, but amongst a wide audience with no prior knowledge of ocean science. It is exactly this type of communication tool I was interested in building in order to galvanize peo pleʼs imaginations and generate impact."
Jessica
In their words
"Coralie ended up being a perfect fit for this collaboration. From our first brain-storming sessions, she proved to be a very open-minded person, accepting of my ideas and views while simultaneously providing me with her expertise on what works, and what might not work, in the world of design and visualization.
Throughout the process, she has been extremely organized, structured, flexible and hard-working. Working with Coralie on this project has been not only an enjoyable and exciting experience, but also one with outcomes that are very useful to my work."
Jessica
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