Art Direction
Illustration
2024
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Each issue arrived as a cluster of academic notes, interview transcripts, and policy findings, often pulling in different directions. The challenge was creating visual storytelling that could carry genuine intellectual weight while making these complex ideas feel more accessible and engaging.
Solution
We built them a set of illustrations grounded in coastal community life, where fishing boats, familiar shorelines, and recognisable social scenes make the material feel familiar. The illustrations were designed to be conversation starters in themselves, layered with enough detail that a CRP can open a discussion naturally, without needing to be an expert.
Strategy
A repeatable pair: concept artwork and infographic spread, per issue. Each artwork borrowed a familiar everyday format, a board game, a receipt, a DIY manual, a GPS screen, a colour wheel, a potluck and bent it to carry the argument. The illustration style stayed consistent across the run; texture, palette, and palette-breakers shifted with the subject. Together they read like one coherent object across ten issues.
Result
Code Green reached 445 readers across 15 issues, accumulating 9.5k views, with illustrations that made some of the most complex questions in climate and technology legible to a cross-disciplinary audience.
