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©Timm Kekeritz

Water is probably one of the most precious resources and vital for everyone’s everyday life. In spite of this obvious fact, people use large amounts of water: drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc.

One of the most important research papers in this field is Chapagain, A.K. and Hoekstra, A.Y. (2004), »Water footprints of nations«, Value of Water Research Report Series No. 16, UNESCO-IHE, Delft, the Netherlands. Timm Kekeritz created a poster, visualizing parts of their research data, to make the issue of virtual water and the water footprint perceptible.

The water footprint of a person, company or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the commodities, goods and services consumed by the person, company or nation. The idea of the water footprint is quite similar to the ecological footprint, but focussing on the use of water.

Check out the official project website at http://www.traumkrieger.de/virtualwater/

Based on the data gathered by Hoeckstra et al. in their study »Water Footprint of Nations« Timm Kekeritz created this double-sided poster. One side visualizes the water footprint of selected nations, emphasizing the im- and export of virtual water. The other side shows the virtual water content of selected foods and commodities. The design itself is minimalistic - using silhouettes and typography only. The fonts used are TheSans and TheSerif by Berlin-based Dutch type designer Luc(as) de Groot. The printed version also shows water drops in a shiny finish, emphasizing the virtual character of the water contained in our everyday goods.

Double-sided poster, A0 (1189 x 841 mm), 150 g/qm paper, two color (cyan, black) offset print plus partial shiny finish

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©Timm Kekeritz

The front side shows the virtual water content of selected foods and commodities.

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©Timm Kekeritz

The backside shows the water footprint of selected nations, emphasizing the im- and export of virtual water.

The main intention of this poster is to show how much freshwater is used to produce selected products - hoping for people to rethink their consumption patterns. The visualization of nation’s footprints tries to draw the big picture and sensitize for local problems in differnt parts of the world. The poster is rather a rough summary of the virtual water issue, than a step-by-step instructions to lower your personal water footprint.

[excerpt from waterfootprint.org] Virtual water content – The virtual-water content of a product (a commodity, good or service) is the volume of freshwater used to produce the product, measured at the place where the product was actually produced (production-site definition). It refers to the sum of the water use in the various steps of the production chain. The virtual-water content of a product can also be defined as the volume of water that would have been required to produce the product at the place where the product is consumed (consumption-site definition). We recommend to use the production-site definition and to mention it explicitly when the consumption-site definition is used. The adjective ‘virtual’ refers to the fact that most of the water used to produce a product is not contained in the product. The real-water content of products is generally negligible if compared to the virtual-water content. [http://www.waterfootprint.org](http://» read more at waterfootprint.org)

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©Timm Kekeritz

to get a better overview of the available data, a interactive flash application visualized parts of the research data in different ways. Based on these insides, the detailed design was realized in Adobe Illustrator CS2.