EY Design Studio Philadelphia

EY Design Studio is comprised of hundreds of people across the Americas: Canada, United States, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, & Argentina. We all wanted to participate in HEART 17’s call for creative activism to promote the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), however all of our Studio locations were unique and different. So making a public art installation that would work at one Studio could not be easily replicated at other Studios. So we opted to empower one physical installation with our collective diverse voices through another physical component to compliment our painting.

When pedestrians would visit the window murals in Philadelphia, we hoped the art would provoke ideas about how to make the 17 SDGs a reality. What could I change? What could I do? What if…

So we decided to prompt “What if…?” to everyone in our Design Studio locations in the Americas. Through a simple online form, individuals responded with a thought, a hope, an idea as it related to one of the SDGs. We incorporated every one of these messages into the exhibit.

Through the help of Studio artisans in Philadelphia, these messages were handwritten on to individual ribbons and attached outside our Studio in front of the window with the 17 SDGs displayed. Pedestrians can learn about the goals and read messages from people in Canada all the way down to South America. We even color coded the ribbons to reflect the region they originated from.

"It's powerful to see our Design Studio community 'at a glance' through the various ribbon colors we selected to capture our individual intentions for the Heart 17 initiative. It's also engaging to see passersby selecting a ribbon and reading an intention from different country." — Travis

The final touch was to make this participatory for the local community. We added some white blank ribbons that simply read “What if…” allowing anyone with a permanent marker the ability to add a thought of their own.

"We received a huge response from studios across the Americas so transcribing these messages was no small feat! Some volunteers spent the entire day writing ribbons and many took on the added challenge of writing in a different language. Walking up to the railing, you'll hear the sound of over 100 ribbons floating in the breeze and you'll find wishes written in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English." — Nellie

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Intuitive Art Space, an art gallery inside of our Studio, was an instant idea to be the vehicle for promoting HEART 17's message. With large, street-level windows the space provides a lot of visibility located right on a bustling Main Street in the neighborhood.

We came up with a plan through some photo renderings and mock-ups, deciding to utilize the two main windows for a large, bold interpretation of HEART 17's heart element, which is made up of 17 shapes, using our brand colors. We treated the windows as huge canvases and explored a new technique by painting directly on the inside of them. It was a big job and we wanted to make the creation of this artwork a team event, so we gave some consideration to the design of the shapes to help our Studio artisans stay aligned visually.

"We felt it appropriate to explore shapes, colors and concepts within the EY Design Studio visual language that communicated the 17 Sustainability Global Goals (SDGs) in an engaging way for the public. The symbols and figures within each shape of the heart represent each concept and are abstracted to compel the viewer to look deeper and decipher each one." — Kirk Bray

While the large mural would be large and impactful, we needed a way to better showcase the 17 individual SDGs. So we utilized a side window to show the individual 17 heart pieces labeled with the goals. Hand-written typography was done by Morgan.

"We first decided on a grid for the side window and then began to mock up how the shapes and typography would fall into place. It took a few test runs to decide on the best size of the type so that it could be readable from a few feet away, but still small enough that it caused onlookers to come closer and engage with the installation." — Morgan Knepper

While Intuitive Art Space would be the physical location of the installation, our EY Design Studio community extends across the Americas. We had a lot of Studio artisans help create these paintings in-person, but how might we virtually include participation from our colleagues in other EY Design Studio locations? More to come… 👀🎗✨✍️

HEART 17 is a global social enterprise uniting people and business to accelerate the 17 Sustainability Global Goals (SDGs) throughout the world, not by charity but by the business of innovation, creativity and partnership. Standing alongside the vision of HEART 17 is the United Nations Development Programme - UNDP—fighting to end poverty, inequality and climate change in 170 countries.

When HEART 17 asked digital agencies around the world to engage in “creative activism” on their behalf to help get their message out, we wanted to get involved! 

How might EY Design Studio come together to use our collective voices and encourage our community to think about a more sustainable future AND have some fun along the way? More to come… 👀🎨✨📐