Make rubbish beautiful and purposeful for Heathrow Express’ anniversary.
Art Direction | Print design - Given London
The goal? Celebrating 20 years of the Heathrow Express service while highlighting its sustainability credentials in an engaging, fun and quintessentially British way. We started with a simple question: over the last 20 years, the Heathrow Express has dramatically reduced waste from its operations... how can we use the waste that’s left over to tell our story?
The answer was to take the waste that’s left onboard the trains and up-cycle it to create a series of inspiring, celebratory messages.
The idea of up-cycling waste supported a key business focus around reducing waste, and allowed us to communicate in a crafty, creative way. We commissioned award winning sculptor, Rebecca Sutherland, to help bring this vision to life.
We created 24 individual sculptures and pieces of art to be included in the final posters. Materials varied from drink cans that would later become a plate of fish and chips, to plastic bottles that turned into beautiful flowers. With Rebecca’s experience in paper craft, we made use of this material in many inventive ways, designing female figures, extremely detailed paper or even a half a metre long 3D sculpture of a mobile device using discarded paper tickets.
The artwork was so well received that the teams behind Heathrow Express and Heathrow Airport decided to duplicate the posters in all London terminals now reaching 6.5 million passengers a year. The work was very well received in the press, featuring in several publications including Design Week, Creative Bloq and Travel Weekly.
“The end result has delivered brilliantly against the brief by deeply integrating the concept, design creative and messaging to create a well-rounded, impactful campaign. We’ve been really impressed by their creative expertise and ability to tell the Heathrow Express sustainability story in a unique, accessible and engaging way.”
NATHAN HARRISON, COMMUNICATIONS BUSINESS PARTNER AT HEATHROW EXPRESS