An infographic exhibition supported Scandlines’ lawsuit against the Fehmarnbelt tunnel project in the Baltic Sea.
In summer 2014, Hering Schuppener Consulting, one of the leading strategic communications advisors in Europe, asked me for support on the visualization and design for a stakeholder campaign. The business of its client, Scandlines AS, which has run ferry lines in the Baltic Sea between Germany and Denmark since 1872, was endangered by the project to build a tunnel between the German Fehmarn and the Danish Lolland. Apart from that, this tunnel seemed to be a money-burning machine and a threat to the entire region.
To support Scandlines’ lawsuit against the tunnel construction, Hering Schuppener got the idea to install a space where people could get a critical view on the project. We decided to use the power of infographics to engage people’s interest and create a more in-depth understanding. But simply visualizing some related data wouldn't do the trick. A story was what we needed to connect everything and to lead visitors through that space. This was the main task. To go along with that, we needed some printed material that people could take away. This implicated creating a design that would work across different forms of media.
We chose to use illustrative infographics to instantly draw people into our story, enabling their emotional access to a vast amount of statistical, technical, environmental and financial information.
The story we created on the walls of the info point in Puttgarden took our visitors on a journey to the region around the island of Fehmarn, and its more than 100-year long history with the ferry and its nature. The step to the possible future where this tunnel was built supposed to feel like a spine-chilling glimpse behind the mirror – irreparable damages on the economy and environment would go along with this seemingly forward-looking infrastructure project.
Comparing the promised future and the real implications left no doubt–this tunnel must not be built, and we succeeded! The Court of Justice of the EU stopped the funding of the project in 2018.
As soon as our visitors were engaged emotionally, we wanted them to understand this project's
financial downside too. We wrapped this as part of a sign placed on a column shaped like a pile of coins.