Serpentine — 140 Ideas for Planet Earth

Overview

Serpentine Galleries is one of the UK’s most influential contemporary art institutions. In 2021, they launched Back to Earth, a major initiative that invited over 140 artists, architects, poets, scientists, and thinkers to contribute short texts addressing the climate crisis. The result was an extraordinary anthology — a manifesto for how creative thinking could reshape humanity’s relationship with the planet.

Tell Your Friends was brought in to translate this printed anthology beyond traditional gallery walls and into dynamic digital formats — a motion identity system, social content, and a podcast series that extended the project’s reach far beyond the exhibition space.

Challenge

The Back to Earth anthology was intellectually dense — 140 contributions from artists including Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, and Marina Abramović, covering everything from soil health to space exploration. The challenge was not creating content about the project; it was creating a digital language that could carry the weight of the ideas without diluting them.

The material needed to work across formats: motion graphics for social feeds, video content for YouTube and the gallery website, and an audio podcast series. Each format had to serve a different audience — from dedicated contemporary art followers to casual Instagram scrollers — while maintaining the intellectual rigor of the source material.

Approach

Motion identity system: We developed a motion language that could flex across the project’s diverse content. The visual system translated the anthology’s editorial design into motion — kinetic typography, organic textures, and restrained colour that let the contributors’ words carry the emotional weight.

Social content: We created a series of motion graphic pieces adapted for Instagram, Twitter, and other social platforms. Each piece distilled a single contributor’s idea into a few seconds of compelling motion — accessible enough for the scroll, substantive enough to reward the pause.

Podcast series: We produced audio content extending the project’s ideas into long-form conversations, creating a permanent archive of the Back to Earth dialogue that could reach audiences beyond the gallery.

Results & Impact

The digital campaign established a new communication framework for Serpentine’s digital initiatives. The motion identity system became a recognisable visual language for the Back to Earth brand across all channels.

The campaign transformed printed anthology material into a networked digital experience that reached audiences far beyond the gallery’s physical visitors. It amplified the Back to Earth program internationally and became a foundational reference for Serpentine’s ongoing digital strategy.

The work demonstrated that cultural institutions can engage with complex, urgent subjects — like the climate crisis — through digital formats without sacrificing intellectual depth.