Microplastics are no longer just an environmental issue – they’re inside us. When a major new documentary ‘The Plastic Detox’ set out to expose the hidden health crisis caused by toxic chemicals in plastics, we were brought in to build the campaign brand, messaging, film title animation and website to help turn viewers into action-takers.
The challenge
For decades, the plastics crisis has been framed as a pollution problem. Something happening out there – in the oceans, in landfill, in the environment. But the science has shifted. Dramatically.
Microplastics and the toxic chemicals they carry are now found in human blood, breastmilk, placentas, and even embryos. They’re being linked to rising infertility, hormonal disruption, early puberty, metabolic conditions and certain cancers. This isn’t just an environmental emergency anymore. It’s a human health crisis, and it couldn’t be more personal.
The challenge was to build a campaign that matched the urgency of that reality. One that didn’t flinch from the truth, but also didn’t leave people paralysed by it.
The idea
Our Bodies: No Place For Plastics.
The campaign needed to land hard and fast. People needed to feel it in their gut, and then immediately know what they could do about it. So we built a visual identity and messaging system with two distinct but connected personalities.
The campaign itself is confrontational by design. Bold, unapologetic, all-caps type. A monochrome black-and-white palette sliced through with a toxic green representing the forever chemicals and microplastics silently accumulating inside us. Photography is raw and desaturated, or images with microplastics rendered in that toxic green, making the invisible feel viscerally real. Nothing is softened.
Particles run throughout the entire visual language, a constant reminder that these things are everywhere, surrounding us, inescapable.
That same thinking drove the film title animation. Plastic-textured letterforms slowly disintegrate into a toxic, drifting cloud. It sets the tone from the first frame.
The campaign’s call to action ‘Unplastic Your Life’ flips the script. After the gut punch, it hands people something they can actually do.
Which is where the website comes in. Deliberately different in tone. Positive, clean, solutions-first. A resource hub designed to answer the question every viewer will have when the credits roll: what do I do now? Easy navigation, clear actions, a warmer palette, subtle animation and pixelated transitions that carry just enough of the campaign’s energy without the confrontation.
The outcome
The ‘Unplastic Your Life’ campaign launched alongside ‘The Plastic Detox’ documentary, giving viewers and the broader coalition of 100+ partner organisations, a unified visual and verbal identity to rally around. From individual swaps people can make at home, to pushing for systemic change, the campaign provides both the urgency and the roadmap.