9 Seconds — Fabian Seibert
The municipality of Venray wants to encourage the use of public transport and is therefore redeveloping Venray Station. Over the coming years, the paved station area will make way for a design in which plants and trees play a central role. Designer Fabian Seibert gives nature a voice in this transition from grey to green in a playful way. To do this, he adds new pictograms and codes to the familiar signs already found around the station.
Countless small solutions
Climate change is a slow process and therefore remains somewhat abstract. We know we need to do things differently, but how? It is almost impossible to imagine how the hundreds of small decisions we make every day are connected to something as large and abstract as the climate. Yet this is exactly where change needs to happen: in all those everyday decisions and responses. There is no single brilliant solution. We can only rely on the combined effect of countless small solutions.
Simple messages
Changing patterns and habits, and therefore making different decisions, requires attention and focus. You need to be aware of what you are doing in order to do it differently. But are we still capable of that? The constant flow of small pieces of information and our dependence on emotional feedback from ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ have caused our average attention span to become shorter for years. It is thought that our attention span is now less than nine seconds, similar to that of a goldfish. What kind of solutions would a goldfish come up with for climate change?
On the other hand, simplifying messages is exactly what we as a society use to get through the day without major conflicts. It is remarkable how a group of individuals manages to cross an intersection without getting in each other’s way, simply with the help of a few coloured lights. Red and green. Simple messages. Simple shapes and colour codes.
9 seconds
These are the codes and pictograms that help us make decisions when we need to get quickly from A to B, for example at a train station. Do I go left or right? Should I wait or run? The challenge is to think not only about yourself the next time you make such a decision, but also about the three billion organisms living in a litre of soil beneath the platform. You do not have to think about nature and the climate all day. But start with nine seconds. Then ten, then eleven, then twelve.
Give it a try.
Even the goldfish will thank you.
