A Green Campaign

Lehigh’s Marketing Club and the student-run design team Fusion teamed up in 2017 to create an advertising campaign for the United Nations that aimed to encourage its employees to live more sustainably. The campaign also was designed to boost attendance at the 2017 UN Green Fair in New York City.

The students involved in the project presented to the UN Environment Group, which hosted the two-day event. They offered two creative concepts and five different logo designs—to achieve the UN Green Fair’s goal. The chosen logo featured the UN’s color wheel (representing 17 sustainable goals), and in its center, green shapes that looked like a person but also resembled leaves.

“It’s the connection between people, the Earth and the UN as a whole,” said designer Justine Gaetano ’16. The idea was for people to see “humans at the center of what can be accomplished in making the world a better place, and to do so in a way that felt vibrant and contemporary.”

Pat Kroll ’17 came up with the selected promotion, which was pledge boards, in which UN employees could choose and post “I Pledge” stickers to reflect what they’d be committed to, whether to protect ocean life or life on land, take action for the environment, consume responsibly and the like. The logo also was used digitally. A goal was to have UN employees reflect on their lives and ask: How can I make a sustainable change in my life?

Gaetano said the UN plans to use the concepts to promote future fairs.

The UN’s sustainable development goals include ending poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, building resilient infrastructure and promoting well-being, among other actions.