Futerra's response to the United Nations global call out to creatives

COVID-19 has upended life as we know it, in ways we could not have imagined a few short months ago. Despite causing global trauma and collective grieving, this pandemic has spurred countless individuals and groups around the world to rise to a common challenge and show immense solidarity. Leading the charge on a global scale, the World Health Organization is helping ensure all countries are armed with information and ready to respond to the health crisis. To support their mission, the United Nations launched an open call to creatives to translate critical public health messages into engaging pieces that would resonate across languages, cultures, and platforms. 

But how do you create breakthrough pieces that will inspire and inform everyone, everywhere amidst a global crisis? 

Leverage our universal language

To create real impact, we searched for something engaging, simple, telegraphic, and immediately understood in any language, at any age, and with any literacy level. So naturally, we turned to the humble emoji, our universal language. Through Twitter’s open-sourced twemojis, we found we could communicate all of the WHO’s key health messages visually through globally-recognized symbols.

These new-age hieroglyphics connect us in a digital age and nod to our collective ancestry when we used images instead of words to communicate. They allow us to convey more than just emotionless instructions, but important stories and regionally-specific messaging with a lightness of heart.

Built for a hopeful yet uncertain future

Set on the iconic UN sky blue, this visual system doesn’t just translate a single message; it’s a whole universe. The global outbreak of COVID-19 is something we will continue to fight for months to come, which is why we aimed to build a flexible system easily updated to accommodate any new scientific findings as the epidemic evolves from top health officials and scientific experts. 

Our assets were shortlisted by the selection committee and are available for download by the general public, arming us all to fight the pandemic, together.