CALM Missed Birthdays

A walk-through installation of 6,929 balloons at Westfield shopping centre in London.

Creative agency adam&eveDDB were working with Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) to draw attention to youth suicide. Each balloon in the installation represented a young person who had taken their own life in the past ten years - a ‘missed birthday’.

Key to the success of this project was working with the agency right at the beginning of the creative process. This allowed us to explore several different concepts and their feasibility before moving into design and production.

A non-negotiable for everyone involved was that this installation had to make a palpable impact - one that reflected the tragic statistics behind the campaign. This objective created a benchmark for every stage of the project - and one we never lost sight of. We tested and retested potential solutions until we were confident we had one that did the campaign justice. 

For sustainability reasons, helium balloons were discarded as an option. Instead, air-filled balloons were daisy chained with vertical lines. The resulting mass of colourful birthday balloons included a tunnel, allowing members of the public to walk through the installation.

• It’s a visually stunning and artistic response to a tragic statistic - data visualisation on another level
• It highlights our commitment to social causes and charitable work
• It demonstrates our dedication to ensuring projects reach their full artistic and creative potential.