In the third class we were asked to think about our third design idea, for which we will need to contact one environment agency and gather information, then come up with a topic and develop design idea on it. The design must intervene with one or more system(s).
Advertising campaign promoting The Community Solar Project in NYC
—#DOJUST1THING
On the home page of the website of The Earth Day Initiative, there is this floating button that writes “DO JUST 1 THING”, under a text stating “Looking to make a difference for the environment? Want to green your lifestyle? Start now in just minutes”. Clicking on that button, one goes into another page with the slogan “#DOJUST1THING” enlarged, emphasized, and placed in the center of the page, under which is a question “What’s one thing I can do to green my lifestyle?”, and under the question is another question asking where do you live, with two choices—“I LIVE IN NYC” and “I DON’T LIVE IN NYC”, which respectively direct into Community Solar Project Promotion and Arcadia Power(Wind Energy) Promotion.
Since I live in NYC, I decided to do an Advertisement Campaign for the Community Solar Project. The existed elements useful to construct an advertisement campaign is good enough, meaning that they already did quite a good job on their website, my challenge lies on how to get the slogan out from the website and apply to the real world.
According to the information I gathered from emailing them and from the relative websites, Community Solar is applicable for all PSEGLI and ConEd customers, reducing 8-10% of their electricity bills. It is in partnership with the PowerMarket, a provider of solar energy and is one of the first community solar projects in NYC. One does not have to buy and install solar panel on his/her rooftop, instead, he/she subscribe to a piece of a large array built in his/her area. It costs nothing to subscribe to the array. When one subscribe to the solar project, as his/her share of the solar project produces electricity, one’s ConEd bill gets credited and that amount is subtracted from his/her bill. Then, instead of paying the full rate to ConEd (because one’s bill is already covered by those solar credits), he/she pay the project, but at a 10% discount.
The system this could have impact on is obviously the electricity supply chain. By introducing solar energy communities into the city, not only it helps people to cut down the prices, but also reduces the production of fossil fuel-generated electricity.
Therefore I had an idea, it is slightly pricy to install thus somehow unrealistic for New York City. That is to design a solar panel wallscape advertisement with two layers. The under layer being the solar panel, and the upper layer being LED light panels arranged in the way that form the slogan “GO SOLAR” and “#DOJUST1THING”(Which I made a mistake in prototyping, instead of typing in “DOJUST1THING”, I typed “JUSTDO1THING”, I suppose that it doesn’t make much difference thus is negligible). During the day time, the solar panel would absorb energy from the sun and light up the slogan at night time. A solar panel with such size should be more than enough to light up the LED slogans, but definitely not so much that can provide electricity to the whole building on which it will be installed. Therefore I made a connection between the lounge area of the building and the solar panel, providing electricity for illumination of the lounge area (assuming the area uses energy-efficient LED light) at night time.
Poster:
Advertisement Mockup:
