Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard
How does a fledgling campaign gather 1,000 people at a protest within months? What role does design have in advancing social justice?
Role
Social Media Manager
Solution
Internal Movement Building
Narrative Development
Content Strategy
Content Creation
In 2018, I came to college and took on the task of relaunching Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard with my peers after its 3-year hiatus from campaigning for Harvard University to divest its holdings from the fossil fuels industry. I led a new visual identity and laid the framework for a social media effort that has long outlived my time as an organizer and eventually helped to pressure Harvard to announce plans to divest as of September 2022.
Problem
A dormant political campaign needs a visual identity to revive student interest and rally campus-wide support for its demands.
Challenges
A lack of visual history or tradition means a visual expression has to developed from scratch. The scale of the campaign requires an intentional process to devise brand identity as well as a structure and process by which content would be created and shared.
Solution
Preliminary programming and internal conversations around the campaign’s purpose, goals, and future provide insights for a visual identity that is developed in step with the campaign’s rebirth, chosen and adjusted over the course of four months to best align with the group’s identity.
We build pressure on the university and anticipation for our events by creating series.
We use techniques like outlines, stipple brushes, and text fills to edit images and content.
I organized our social media into four categories. Using Hootsuite to schedule our posts, we are able to push these different content streams at once and build consistent engagement with our following.
I’m happy to say that as of October 2022, Harvard University declared it would divest all its holdings from the fossil fuel industry, a success that was no doubt propelled by pressure from social media. See our social media here.
We use our brand colors yellow and orange as a constant reference to the campaign.
