Dr. Roz Pidcock, whom we met when we worked on the data visualisations for the summary for policymakers of our first IPCC report, is an advocate for the profound impact of professional design expertise in scientific projects. In her own words:

Information designers, when included from early stages, can facilitate important conversations around content and communication, and when these conversations start early on they can shape the actual content, structure and nature of a report.

The goal was to build the identity of the whole project including covers and reports’ template, setting an approach that could be consistent across the first three reports for Bangladesh, Kenya, and South Africa. The idea is that new reports for new countries will follow in the future.

We facilitated the co-design process and created a key signature figure for the executive summary of each report. This collaborative effort across various teams in different countries was grounded in preliminary in-depth conversations about the scientific evidence, enabling us to arrive at a unique key message relevant across all countries and reports: climate impacts have cascading effects on people’s lives, in every country.