Soldiers wearing helmets advance through a trench in a smoky battlefield. Overlaid is a red poppy illustration and the text “Parting Words.” The scene is black and white, except for the red poppy.

09 Dec, 2019

Parting Words – Celebrating unsung heroes of the two World Wars

By Dan Sargent, Creative Director

When this was published, we were Blue Stag. Today we’re Everglow ✨ Read the rebrand story

A modern solution with an historic message

The website was designed to mirror the type of content that would be available to us. The images we had were from 70+ years ago which understandably were in black and white or sepia. Creating a website that complimented both the time period and media was essential. While we had a limited palette of black and white, we paid tribute to the Remembrance poppy by including red which is synonymous with the poppy throughout the website.

By adding smoke effects, music and transitions to the website, it gave it a very solemn, eerie and atmospheric feel to the site. We also opted to use a serif typeface for the headings, quotes and captions which would have been more common at the time with the use of typewriters etc. We chose the appropriately named ‘Tribute’ serif typeface which lent itself beautifully to the design.

Let this be my parting word

Our aim was to create a digital solution that would do justice to these 14 incredible individuals and their stories.

The atmospheric design mirrors what was a dark time for humanity. By combining poetry, music, illustration and other media, the website delivers a powerful and cinematic story of sacrifice and compassion.

Welsh actor, Robert Pugh lent his voice to the poem which when paired with music for the introduction of the website, added to the atmosphere and created a beautiful introduction to our 14 stories.

The illustrations within each story help to bring the words to life. Picking out notable elements from each story such as medals, weapons and even the pigeon herself, Cher Ami. It’s another nod to the past, drawing the elements instead of using a computer, helping to add further to these amazing stories.

Black-and-white photo of a group of concentration camp prisoners in striped uniforms standing together, shown in a digital exhibition about Charles Joseph Coward, titled The ‘Count of Auschwitz’.

A black-and-white photo shows a soldier releasing a pigeon into the air, accompanied by text describing Cher Ami, a pigeon that saved 200 lives during war by delivering a critical message despite grave injuries.

Black and white photo of two navy officers in uniform; one pins a medal on the other. Caption beside it reads, The cook that became a Pearl Harbour hero, featuring Doris Miller and describing his heroic actions at Pearl Harbour.

A black-and-white photo of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, draped with a Union Jack flag, inside Westminster Abbey. Text beside it reads about Britain’s greatest soldier and the Unknown Warrior of the First World War.

We are proud of how the whole team came together to work on this passion project and to achieve this solution. The team consisted of a copywriter, designer, illustrator/animator, UX/UI designer, back-end developer, narrator and a marketing/strategy manager. Each working together throughout the process from start to end to deliver this website. Each story needed to be media-rich, informative and translatable to both the website and social media.

14 incredible stories

The start of the project involved us researching and identifying the 14 unsung heroes that we would showcase within the website. We ended up with over 50. It was difficult to decide which to take forward for the website launch. Realistically, given the timeframe, it wasn’t possible to do all 50, even though we wanted to.

We decided that the best course of action was to choose 14 stories which covered the widest variety of people, inclusive of race, religion, geography and even species. These stories are from around the globe, including America, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Germany and Poland. With stories ranging from a Nazi sympathiser turned Jewish lifesaver to a Native American Corporal who, alongside 17 other Native American ‘codetalkers’, was responsible for bewildering intercepting German forces with an unbreakable code drawn from their native Comanche tongue. It’s the breadth of these stories that really bring the website to life.

These unknown stories and unsung heroes can finally step into the light.

A memorial image featuring black-and-white portraits of 14 individuals, each in a circular frame, with their names, titles, countries, and life spans displayed below each photo on a dark background.

We will not forget them

The website told the stories and recognised the contributions and sacrifices made by men and women around the world, which would, of course, be marked on Remembrance Day. This made Sunday 10th November our absolute deadline for launch. This also coincided with Veterans Day which is marked in the US on the 11th November.

This was a tight turnaround to get the website ready as well as ensuring we gave each story the attention it needed to be able to tell the stories of these incredible people. It’s more important than ever to remember the sacrifices of the men, women and animals who fought or were involved with WW1 and WW2. Their stories are being lost as time passes, generations are growing up barely knowing a thing about either of the World Wars and we hope that with this website, we can at least keep their stories alive for a little longer.

Hopefully, as time goes on, we can discover and add more of these incredible stories to the website so that these little-known acts of heroism can be recognised and passed on to future generations so that they can know of the people who made their futures possible.

View the website