California Intertidal Infinity
Since moving to California, I have fallen in love with the rocky coast on the Western shore of the US. I have also seen how much people living near this rocky coastline work to protect their natural spaces.
To honor some of the incredible biodiversity of this space, and to bring the California coast elsewhere, I designed a sticker featuring creatures that community members and scientists identified as some of their favorite charismatic members of this unique ecosystem.
The sticker is designed to wrap around a water bottle, taking the viewer on a tour of the different zones of the intertidal, as well as the creatures they might see in each of those zones. The design features species interactions you might see while near the California coast (can you spot the crab about to be someones' lunch?), and is overlayed on my photograph of the ecosystem that inspired the project: the rocky intertidal here in Santa Barbara.
Ecologically accurate, the wraparound design makes the viewer feel they can travel through the rocky intertidal in an endless loop - experiencing the changing ecosystem firsthand!
Like in science, artistic methods should be tested before final implementation. The design for the sticker was prototyped first with paper I taped together while in the field, sketching out early concepts for the design. I tested how it might wrap around a standard Nalgene water bottle (being a favorite brand of many people) and continued to hone the drawing.
After talking to people who work in and live near the California coast, I made a list of organisms to feature in the design, including some personal favorites as well (see if you can spot the two-spot octopus hiding behind a rock!). I hand drew each creature, digitized my illustrations and printed tests before creating the final product: a 20 inch long and 4 inch high sticker which can wrap around a water bottle, sit on a car bumper, and take the California coast around the world.
What you can see in the image is each zone of the rocky intertidal (low, middle and high) behind the sticker, corresponding to the equivalent zones on the sticker. You can imagine the creatures on the illustration in the real image of the habitat behind them - even though you can't see them in the photo, they are there just out of sight!
