ABOUT

The weather is famously Britain’s favourite subject. The Sea is The Sky finds a very natural way to drop ocean literacy into conversations happening every day in the UK’s pubs, cafés, homes and at bus stops— wherever people seek shelter from the rain.

Most of us know the ocean is in trouble, but many of us live in inland cities, which feel worlds apart from the sea. Smart billboards hooked up to live rain data remind us where that rain has come from - the oceans.

The Sea Is The Sky was created by Glimpse and DOOHdotcom to promote the charity group We Are Ocean.

When it rains, the screens show a series of surreal scenes that effortlessly win smiles and drive home the message: The Sea Is The Sky. The animations show an upside-down world, with the sea at the top and the sky underneath, and a team of marine creatures (including a narwhal, a hammerhead and a pair of green sea turtles) playfully towing rain-clouds behind them as they swim through the sky (or the sea?).

The talent behind those tin-foil turtles is Andrea Popyordanova, an illustrator based between London and Sofia, currently studying an MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art. The characters were animated by Charlotte Temple, who previously led design and motion on Cosmopolitan UK’s Snapchat Discover channel.

The pair were recruited from the Glimpse network, alongside DOOH expert Jeremy Taylor, head of strategy at DOOHdotcom who co-ordinated the dynamic weather and location information seen on the digital billboards.

The campaign was a winner in Ocean's annual digital creative competition. It makes the oceans tangible, no matter where you live. The plan is to get people thinking ‘ocean’ every time they feel raindrops.

In the UK, that’s 133 days a year—probably a lot more often than most of us currently think about the ocean.