California Intertidal Infinity
The story:
Since moving to California, I have fallen in love with the rocky coast on the Western shore of the US. I have also seen how much people living near this rocky coastline work to protect their natural spaces.
To honor some of the incredible biodiversity of this space, and to bring the California coast elsewhere, I designed a sticker featuring creatures that community members and scientists identified as some of their favorite charismatic members of this unique ecosystem.
The sticker is designed to wrap around a water bottle, taking the viewer on a tour of the different zones of the intertidal, as well as the creatures they might see in each of those zones. This page outlines some of the process of designing and building this sticker for the community in California.
Try it, and try again
Like in science, methods should be tested before final implementation.
From top to bottom you can see the steps of my process to get to the final piece.
From a taped together set of waterproof paper I built in the field when the initial idea came to me, to the final product on the bottom !
Process Design
Here, I show the prototype for the sticker, alongside a section of the final design.
Conference Tabling
I was able to sell these designs to raise money for science illustration initiatives on campus at the Western Society of Naturalists 2025 meeting.
Science communication in the world! Seeing my stickers on water bottles and car bumpers around campus is an incredibly rewarding part of this project.
The Final Product:
This illustration takes the viewer on a tour of California's rocky intertidal landscape as it lays across a car bumper, or wraps around a water bottle. The drawing features organisms that can be found at each zone of the rocky intertidal.
