When Is Now

The Context

When Is Now is a global poetry and art movement for urgent climate action, mobilized by the Agam Agenda, the Climate Vulnerable Forum, and the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities. Poets and artists from climate-vulnerable countries across Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America respond to each other's words with linked poems and visual work. The campaign needed a visual identity that could hold nine languages, 24 countries, and the weight of what was being said.

The Approach

The poems came first, so the typography had to lead. Everything in the visual system begins with the word. The graphic elements were drawn from burdock seeds, companion species that cling to whatever passes and travel with it. The symbol takes from the asterisk: a text inside a text, an invitation to look closer. Beyond the identity, WCI provided ongoing creative direction across campaign materials, social media, and physical installations.

The work traveled from screens to the streets of Glasgow during COP26, where street hubs and light projections brought poetic interventions into the climate conference. Voices from the Global South, Indigenous communities, and environmental defenders made visible in a space often dominated by policy language.