WeTransfer believes creative thinking has the power to change the world. Today more than ever, we want to inspire people to go beyond the safe, the obvious and the predictable. In 1977, humanity launched two spacecraft carrying two gold-plated records on which we captured greetings, music, sounds and images. They represent people, creativity and technology?—?a best-of this planet mixtape drifting onwards.

In 2017 we launched a tribute to the Golden Record project in its 40th year. A Message from Earth is an interactive experience for which we commissioned 40 artists, musicians, photographers, writers, comedians and scientists to celebrate its spirit of hope, determination and goodwill of the original.

We wanted to engage a broad audience of creatively-minded people, but had to make sure the project resonated with the science and astronomy communities too.

A Message from Earth was designed to be an immersive experience into which readers can lose themselves. We structured the experience in chapters that reflected the main themes covered on the original golden record – greetings, music, sounds, brainwaves and images. The challenge was to create a coherent whole despite the fact that each section was so different – from an interactive sounds pack, to short stories and photo essays.

The stripped-back black and white color scheme, the oversized typograhic chapter introductions and the suite of specially-commissioned illustrations by Sophy Hollington create a connective visual tissue. Within chapters, animated headings inspired by that theme lead into designs which are led by the kind of content included in each section. The designs had to work for both users dropping in just to one particular piece, and those who took the time to explore the project as a whole.

A Message from Earth was a particular success on social media. We created asset packs for all 40 of the contributors who helped us spread the word, along with organizations embedded in the space-science world, such as SETI and Astronomers Without Borders. It was our biggest social media success of 2017, generating 10 million impressions on Twitter alone.

As WeTransfer continues its evolution from being a file-transfer service to a hub of creative ideas, we wanted a stand-out hero content project with ambition, depth and creative credibility to help shift the thinking around the brand and position us a vocal supporter of creativity as a force for optimism.