Species-appropriate fishkeeping is a passion of mine. Seeing the maltreatment of fish in the hobby and their natural habitats made me want to do something about it.
As my final thesis I chose to report about the dangers our aquatic ecosystems face. After doing extensive research on the topic I arranged a meeting with a zoologist of the Aquatis zoo in Lausanne. There I conducted an interview about their institution and breeding programs. On the second day I took pictures and videos of the enclosures and animals.
After gathering and creating some of the graphics as well as writing the text, I started with the layout of the brochure. There were some requirements that impacted my design, such as the numbers in front of all chapters. Yet I was able to create engaging pages according to the principles of design and typography that I learned during those four years. I set up the document for brochure-print and printed it with our in-house Xerox printer.
With the collected footage I made two short videos of my experience. One shot in horizontal and another in vertical for social media purposes.
The importance of video and pictures is known to everyone in conservation. It's easy for people to avoid their eyes, if they can't see those affected. Media allows us to build an emotional connection to the animals, which in turn makes us care about what happens to their wild counterparts. It was clear to see that the audience really connected to the animals shown in the videos.
The videos were taken with my Nikon D3300. It's important to note that it was quite dark in most rooms of the zoo, since bright lights can scare many aquatic species.
