Cigarettes - design interventions

I have decided to focus on the one area of litter, in this case I've chosen cigarettes since they are the most frequently found item of discarded rubbish. 


The designs focus around the statistics, as people are aware of litter just not necessarily the hard facts. Many smokers probably don't know that cigarette butts are toxic waste because of the high level of harmful chemicals left in the filters. However, these facts alone aren't too likely to provoke smokers so I have based it around the wildlife that cigarette ends can harm or kill. This is to encourage some form of sympathy and consideration, as smokers seemingly innocent disregard has consequences on other living things. 

These were left on the ground intentionally to catch people's gaze, however because of their size they aren't too evident and would inadvertently contribute to littering. Therefore for my next intervention I decided to make it far more noticeable. I based it on the fact that 122 tons of cigarette litter being dropped. But the statistic, although shockingly high doesn't provoke enough of a response. As a result I related it to a common 'known', in this case elephants. Featuring the piece on a life size male elephant painted onto a street wall, in order to really instigate some thought and create a clear comparison.

Cigarettes and Paper - design interventions

My next idea to publicise the amount of litter was through cigarette butts, as i found they take 12 years to biodegrade and cigarette related rubbish contributes to 70% of rubbish in UK towns. I decided to use the waste items themselves to create the piece which, was quite frankly a pretty disgusting job although you'll be glad to know i did use gloves!


The video below shows the making of my intervention followed by the final pictures, illustrating the fact that 120 tons of cigarette litter is dropped every day in the UK. Looking back over the design i under estimated the amount of butts i'd collected and could have produce a larger scale outcome and i may try and revisit it as i progress.

My following intervention focuses on paper as an issue of litter. I decided to make a small, yet reasonably life-size tree out of scraps of thrown-out paper and card, using the scale of it to help emphasise the problem. I believe this could work well as a series, ideally 6 pieces to get across that fact that the average family throws away the equivalent of 6 trees worth of paper a year. If i decide to continue with paper as my chosen form of litter, I might try combining interventions with trees themselves.

Litter - design interventions

I have a new project to create 15 design interventions within the next 3 weeks based upon a news article. I was reading about litter in London and thought it a positive one to create new forms of awareness for. 


These are my initial interventions, using the street as its main location.

The main idea was simply to highlight the litter dropped by people, surprisingly a condom was left which, is probably one of if not the worst thing to litter. I chose yellow as my colour as it's associated with warning and therefore related rather well.


I did however, find myself getting frustrated when taking the pictures as the rubbish kept blowing around, but thought just the circles alone worked well showing where someone had thrown their litter. This could be quite effective seeing streets dotted with yellow rings, with the obvious intention to be as little as possible.

This was my following intervention to write bold messages on the pavement, not dissimilar to those 'STOP' writings on the road. I felt by personifying the street it would make people more inclined to at least stop and take notice if not act. It is certainly more effective than the signs left by officials saying 'do not litter £50 fine' as they simply seem less considerate and almost warrant some form of rebellion. 


I did originally want to spray the message and although i thought it would be better as a set design, i did also think that to some it may seem itself as litter or graffiti despite the good intent. Therefore i opted for chalk because of its temporary and less intrusive display. 

Exploiting Context - typography article

This was a project given to us by our tutor Phil Baines. We had to create a maximum 10 page article with given text, photographs and page dimensions of 242 x 170mm, testing our ability to utilise space with the provided information.


I created mine using a 3 column grid for the images and captions and 4 column grid for the main text and footnotes.