Livery project for EMERGENCY’s search and rescue vessel

Assignment: Livery project for EMERGENCY’s search and rescue vessel

Services: Graphic design, colour design

In this project we designed the livery for the new NGO Emergency Search and Rescue (SAR) vessel for migrants at sea. The ship, built in 2002 and refurbished in 2022, is 51 metres long and 12 metres wide, and can accommodate 28 staff and +175 rescued people.

Designing the livery of this ship meant making the dream it represents a reality. That is why we wanted the phrase of Gino Strada, surgeon and founder of EMERGENCY, on the bulwarks:

‘Rights belong to everyone, otherwise call them privileges’.

These words sum up the utopia and vision of this project; the idea that rescuing migrants at sea is simply the only right thing to do. After all, the numbers leave no alibi. From 2014 to date (according to IOM, the International Organisation for Migration) more than 20,000 people have died or disappeared in the central Mediterranean, more than 1,300 in 2022 alone. 

For this reason, we wanted to contribute to providing a concrete response to this dramatic reality by using our experience in the field of space graphics and emergency design. In designing the ship’s livery, we worked on two levels: the symbolic and the functional.

Symbolically, we did this by transforming the ship into a dialoguing object through the messages printed on its sides and the use of the word EMERGENCY as a symbolic reminder.

From a functional point of view, we worked on the visibility of the ship to make it easily identifiable in an emergency situation. In addition, we focused on making clear the routes that the rescued people will have to take on board once they have been rescued, to reach the clinics on the main deck or the observation areas in the open-air reception area. 

Designing the livery of the Life Support vessel meant giving substance to a utopia by working on an effective integration between functional and visual aspects.