Earth Day Poster

For this project, I had to create an Earth Day poster that spreads awareness about an environmental issue. I decided to focus on ocean pollution and how it affects marine life. The goal was to show how much waste ends up in the ocean and how it can become a serious problem for the animals living there.

To start, I looked at different Earth Day posters and images related to ocean pollution for inspiration. I wanted to find a photo that would make the problem easy to understand without needing a lot of text. I chose an image of marine life and worked with it in Adobe Camera Raw before bringing it into Illustrator. After that, I experimented with the cropping and placement of the image to find what worked best with the rest of the poster.

For the main message, I used “Marine life is suffocating. The ocean is not a landfill.” The wording was meant to be simple but still make people stop and think about what they are seeing. The idea of suffocating connects to how pollution can make it harder for marine life to survive, while the second part makes the message more direct.

I also had to work with the required Earth Day, Sustainability and GWD logos. Making sure they were visible and had enough contrast with the background was important, but I also didn’t want them to take attention away from the main message. The supplied Earth Day caption was also adjusted so that the colours fit with the rest of my design.

I kept the layout fairly simple because I wanted the image and message to be the main focus. The main thing I wanted the viewer to take away from the poster was that the waste we put into the ocean does not just disappear. It affects the animals and environment around it.