The David Suzuki Foundation approached us to design a short 1-minute animation to convey the complexity of the ocean food web, and that removing one species does not increase the population of another.

We started by defining the target audience (people interested & passionate about the ocean food web) and where they would be viewing the video (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). We also identified the action we want people to take after viewing the video — ideally we want them to share the video so it might reach people who aren’t informed about the ocean food web.

The video was designed around a simple slot-machine metaphor to convey the risky nature of gambling with ocean ecosystems. This playful, memorable metaphor would hopefully help the message “stick” and prompt people to share the video with others.