Forests are Life

Very proud to launch our first national outdoor campaign in India “Forests are Life” to mark the UN International Day of Forests 2015. We conceptualised and designed the campaign for USAID India’s Forest-PLUS program, which features several original artworks we developed in collaboration with folk and digital artists across India. We developed the tagline “Forests are Life” to communicate how interlinked our survival is to the services forests provide. When we think of forests we primarily imagine trees and animals. What’s not immediately obvious is that Forests are Water, Forests are Culture, Forests are Biodiversity, Forests are Oxygen, Forests are Carbon Sinks, Forests are Livelihoods…. Forests are so complex and offer infinite gifts to us. So we decided to feature the word FORESTS itself as the highlight if the campaign and chose to hand paint each letter to depict a different service offered to forests such as:

“F” represents the water services forests provide,
“O” depicts the life giving force of a seed,
“R” is the carbon sinks function, and the
“E” shows a habitat for biodiversity,
“S” shows the food and medicine that forests provided,
“T” depicts the cultural life that forests nurture and the final
“S” shows the fuel wood and raw materials services.

While these are not the entirety of services offered by forests, we embedded these visual messages within the text to elucidate the life force inherent in the idea of forests . We created an additional series of graphics to support this concept by depicting these services in traditional painting style graphics.

In partnership with the innovative conservation advisory firm, IORA Ecological Solutions, Vertiver also co-created the India Forest Portal to bring knowledge of India’s forests into the public domain.

Forests are Life campaign was launched by USAID and FICCI on March 21st in New Delhi with a panel discussion on Corporate Forest Responsibility led by IORA Ecological Solutions.