Together with digital agency NATIVE, I designed the campaign below for FLOW,
a South African non-profit organisation promoting water conservation. We built a real-life running tap using recycled water, and video streamed it live. The only thing that could turn that tap off was someone’s commitment to water conservation via Twitter or Facebook. Watch the video below to get the full story.
I was responsible for the design of all aspects of the campaign: from the logo, to the layout, the look & feel and all iconography. My goal was to keep it as simple as possible, with a very strong and enticing call to action to take a pledge to save water.
The copy of the pledges were created to appeal to a socially active audience.
Quirky and fun but with a serious message which made people want to share them.
I designed the individual icons to visually represent each pledge.
Quirky and fun but with a serious message which made people want to share them.
I designed the individual icons to visually represent each pledge.
A live Twitter-fall pulled in any hash-tag with #CloseTheTap and was designed to flow off the page into a progress indicator that looked like a well filling up with water.
Below an animation mock-up I've made for the developers.
Below an animation mock-up I've made for the developers.
When we reached our goal we wanted to show people how grateful we were for all the pledges we received. So I designed a thank you page with a tapestry of thumbnails of all those who tweeted.
Besides the website we also needed to physically build the most important part of the campaign: A real running tap powered by social media and stream it live onto the internet!
The entire structure worked much like a recycling fountain system: There was a barrel of water with the pump inside it. The pump fed the water through a series of pipes until it exited out the tap and back into the barrel.
The entire structure worked much like a recycling fountain system: There was a barrel of water with the pump inside it. The pump fed the water through a series of pipes until it exited out the tap and back into the barrel.
Essentially, what we had to do was give each hash-tag or Facebook post a value, which in turn, had an effect on the tap. The server polled twitter for the hash-tag #CloseTheTap and posts made to Facebook from the site - these were added to a database that communicated with the Arduino device.
The Arduino would then prompt a stepper motor to turn, closing the valve connected to the system and reducing the flow of the water coming out of the tap by a fraction until we reached 10 000 shares and completely closed the tap.
The Arduino would then prompt a stepper motor to turn, closing the valve connected to the system and reducing the flow of the water coming out of the tap by a fraction until we reached 10 000 shares and completely closed the tap.
