Graphic designer Jakob Trollbäck remembers a 2014 meeting with film director Richard Curtis and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, then very much a work in progress, coming up in conversation.

Curtis, whose movies include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually and the Bridget Jones series, is also a UN Advocate for the SDGs. The meeting in Trollbäck’s New York studio suddenly turned to the 17 goals, with Curtis telling him: “I think this may be our last shot of fixing a lot of the things that’s wrong with the planet. And I also think that these goals are going to fail if we can't make them popular. Do you want to help me?”

Trollbäck, founder of The New Division agency, rose to the challenge. Over the course of a year, alongside designer colleague Christina Rüegg-Grässli, he designed the now famous multi-colour palette, individual icons and logo of the SDGs.

Their design had to tick three boxes: be accessible, universal and positive. The interconnectedness of the goals leant itself to the overall circular logo type, and the bright colours were key to making the framework interesting and likeable.

Some icons were almost instantaneous in their creation — such as the fish that represents SDG 14: Life Below Water — while others needed collaboration with the UN communications team colleagues to get right.

For example, Trollbäck remembers SDG 2: Zero Hunger; the initial design had a fork in it, until someone pointed out that two thirds of the of the world’s population don't use forks.

The World Economic Forum say 74% of the adults globally are aware of the SDGs.

This is the final episode of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist podcast series that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs. Episodes 13–18 are produced in partnership with Nature Sustainability, and introduced by Monica Contestabile, its chief editor.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, sought to change the country’s food systems in 2020, it started by looking at school meals and funding several projects around menus, procurement, and how cafeterias were organised.

Breaking down a big goal into smaller component parts and bringing together different interested parties, as Vinnova did, is key to delivering the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), says Kate Roll, a political scientist based at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College, London.

Roll’s particular focus is the last of the 17 SDGs with its focus on strengthening the means of implementation. Roll calls it an “enabling SDG,” its success ultimately measured when the other 16 “big, wooly, hairy SDG goals,” as she terms them, are achieved. These straddle poverty, hunger, education, gender equity, clean water and energy, among others.

Roll explains that one approach to tackling SDG 13’s climate change targets, for example, might be to aim for 100 carbon-neutral cities in Europe by 2030, approaching it from both a transport and energy perspective, but also the built environment, real estate, and people’s behaviour, and bringing together relevant stakeholders, as Vinnova did for its food systems goal.

This is the penultimate episode of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist podcast series that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs. Episodes 13–18 are produced in partnership with Nature Sustainability, and introduced by Monica Contestabile, its chief editor.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Growing up in the last years of the Cold War motivated Gabriele Jacobs to enter academia and play her part in building peaceful societies.

Jacobs works at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where she researches the role artificial intelligence (AI) can play in public safety and the ethical debate surrounding this.

She describes how experiments are being conducted on beaches in the Netherlands to see if AI can be used to predict human behaviour. These experiments also test the ethical, legal and social implications of this use of AI, and question who has the power to choose the definitions used in the algorithms.

Jacobs’ work addresses Sustainable Development Goal Number 16: to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and justice for all.

This is episode 16 of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist series podcast that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs. Episodes 13–18 are produced in partnership with Nature Sustainability, and introduced by Monica Contestabile, its chief editor.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.