The embodied carbon of all the materials going into our buildings accounts for 11% of global emissions. In collaboration with a number of industry partners, Autodesk developed the free-to-use Embodied Carbon Calculator – EC3 for short – for use by architects and engineers on construction projects for identifying which materials have the least environmental impact and lowest levels of embodied carbon. The tool is offered as a free add-on to BIM 360 (construction management software) and has the potential to transform how architecture, engineering and construction firms build sustainability into their design process.
We needed the illustrative graphical style of our video to reflect the key theme, sustainability, which we approached in a few ways. Firstly, we overlaid a very subtle shading animation that flickered on and off throughout the video, imitating a recyclable and environmentally friendly material. Secondly, to mirror the world’s move from single-use plastic to sustainable product materials, all the design elements were illustrated to look as if they were made out of paper or cardboard materials. Thirdly, we featured positive environmental illustrations throughout the video – trees, fields, animals, wind turbines – to connect our actual motion designs back to our green message.
To add impact and reinforce the story, we made sure that every illustrated scene incorporated relevant and visually impactful graphics depicting real world environmental problems or solutions. The video had to reflect the fact that a consortium of industry leaders worked together to create this tool, and not lean too heavily towards Autodesk in its look and feel. With that in mind, the colour treatment didn’t lean towards any one company, but we still managed to bring the video back to Autodesk as a leader in sustainable building technology by featuring the BIM 360 and Autodesk logos towards the end.
All of the above was centred around our campaign tagline – “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” – driving home the critical need of this tool to drive sustainable change. As well as featuring these words on screen, we also framed environmental statistics around our content to highlight the need to measure the negative impact our buildings are making.
While it’s too early to judge adoption, the video has been the critical centrepiece of EC3’s release, and we’ve received feedback that “it’s clear, beautiful and engaging. It was incredibly helpful to have a really valuable storytelling asset”. Importantly, it has been very positively received by the industry, and has cemented Autodesk’s position as leaders in sustainable building technology.