Sheba Hope Reef is a giant piece of living typography and proof we can rebuild coral at speed and scale; in turn helping to reverse the tide of marine ecosystem decline. Built to showcase Sheba’s unique reef star building system, Hope is located off the remote fishing island of Bontusua in Indonesia’s Coral Triangle – an area on the front line in the fight against coral extinction. In 2019, working alongside the island community, Sheba’s team of marine biologists laid 900 hexagonal reef stars containing 15,000 pieces of embryonic coral, creating four huge characters the size of two Olympic swimming pools. Once built, the challenge was getting Hope seen, so we partnered with Google, making Hope viewable from space on Google Earth as a historical landmass, plus diveable with Streetview. This linked directly from Google Earth to Sheba’s website where visitors could learn more fish sustainability. Diving deeper to educate viewers about coral, we extended the typography of the reef, creating a scientifically accurate digital growing font, inspired by our Reef Star system and endorsed by marine biologists. Every coral, sponge and fish species used was native to the restored reefs. Launched on World Oceans Day, the Hope font brought the story of Hope Reef to life in a digital outdoor campaign and as an educational tool in social and print. In static form, font weights reflected the actual reef’s growth over three years. The whole campaign was designed to demonstrate the simplicity and effectiveness of the Sheba Reef Star system. Since Hope Reef, five further governments have adopted the Sheba reef building system, with The Seychelles, Mexico, Australia, The Maldives and US Virgin Islands all embarking on builds – making it the world’s largest coral restoration program.