Branding for nature's living infrastructure
Ecosystem services is a global initiative defining and categorized the various services that people freely gain from the natural environment and its ecosystems. Our mission was to create a revised visual system with the potential to reach a large audience without losing recognition or relevance.
Opportunity
The ecosystem services (Ekosystemtjänster in Swedish) initiative was developed by TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). Locally, the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building, and Planning (Boverket) have been working to integrate ecosystem services and their benefits into our everyday lives through urban planning and infrastructure. Boverket needed a revision of the current system to make it easier to understand and implement across all sectors and levels of Swedish society, not just for people in the fields of urban planning, landscaping and engineering, architecture and ecology.
Process
As the system needed to be easy to grasp, visually appealing and practical to use, we needed to review all previous versions of the system and revise both categorization, design and titles. We dug into the benefits of each service and created texts relevant to a wide range of professions.
A focus group of experts from a number of sectors helped us navigate the different ecological factors, while our focus was on how to best communicate the system in terms of structure, colors, and language.
As we found that the existing system contained a number of inconsistencies and overlaps, we tried to shave the amount of icons down to the essentials and group similar services together. A main hero image was created to showcase the interconnections and the importance of a holistic approach to integrating ecosystems into our world.
Change
The new ecosystem service system was launched in 2019 and made available to the public on Boverket's website.
The purpose of the project was to promote and facilitate collaboration between officials, scientists, politicians and the public. A mutual understanding of the irreplaceable and invaluable benefits that nature provides us with are vital for us to be able to implement ecosystem services into our social planning and create the sustainable societies and cities that we need.
Finally, as ecosystem services are vital to the Global Goals, we created posters clarifying the relations between the services and the Goals. Without prioritizing ecosystems in our urban planning, we will not be able to achieve the Global Goals thereby put nature and our own welfare at great risk.
So, let's take care of our nature, so that it can take care of us.
