The Pentagram-based environmental public service Do The Green Thing has released its tenth Issue – “Nice ad, shame about the planet.” Released in the aftermath of Cannes, it explores the advertising industry's impact on climate change.
The Issue centres on an editorial piece by Do The Green Thing co-founder and Pentagram partner Naresh Ramchandani, who asks whether products that are harmful to the environment should be allowed to publicly promote themselves. Using the same logic that led to the cigarette advertising ban, he considers ad-gags and warning labels, their effectiveness and how they could be applied.
The piece is accompanied by “World Warning Labels,” a series of illustrations by Paula Scher. The twenty-first century equivalent of “Smoking Kills,” these highly playful but deadly serious warning labels are ready to grace any ads for products that have previously unseen environmental consequences, and are ready to tell their inconvenient truth.
“The warning labels address the content of each global problem," says Scher; “designed to be reproduced quite small, in the language of warning labels and poke fun at themselves in spite of the disasters at hand.”
Brave brands can download the labels here.
