With the National Science Challenges drawing to an end, the Sustainable Seas initiative needed a home for ten years of ground-breaking ocean research. The result was Tohorā, a web portal built by the team at Daylight that allows users to easily access hundreds of research papers. Named after the mighty whales that guided ancestors across vast oceans, Tohorā harnesses a decade of scientific breakthrough to guide us towards a healthy, thriving moana.

The creative team at Daylight developed a look and feel based on woodcut printing, which would add an organic, hand-crafted feeling to the content, and textures that would help Tohorā stand out amongst a sea of clean and sterile websites.

For the website I developed the Tohorā icon and logotype, kōwhaiwhai, loading animations and a wide range of illustrations that highlighted various marine species and environments. To support the launch of the website, I was also tasked with creating a short animated sequence, for which 290 frames were illustrated and composited in Aftereffects, where final effects and treatments were added.