The idea of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans and along its shorelines doesn’t exactly conjure up the most beautiful of images. As Alice Dunseath proved though, through animation, it can be made visually appealing. However, we also needed to create a visual identity around our film Plastic Shores, one that could be used in promoting it as well as defining its graphic structure. Our music writer, Howard Tamarisk (who blog entry is to come), suggested we get in touch with Patrick Fry to do this and his advice did not let us down. Just like with Alice, Patrick had the difficult task of creating a set of graphics that represented plastic pollution in an appealing way. The minimalist design he came up with perfectly suited what we were looking for and it went on to be used in everything from the film’s poster to the font used in the interviewees’ title banners to the invitations for various screenings (above). In our opinion the small icons together with the smooth, almost childlike font represented the simplicity and mass productivity of industrial plastic manufacture. When these icons are seen floating around in water (below), their obvious man-made quality makes them alien looking.
Patrick also teamed up with Arnau Millet, another animator, to create an animation sequence that describes the effects of plastic chemicals on the human body. We didn’t want anything too repulsive for this and the two of them put together another creatively simple design that clearly outlined what internal organs were affected by chemicals like BPA, phthalates, and PCB (see below).
