Find Out the Simple Things You Can Do to Live Longer with NEMO Science Museum

Breaking news: we are all going to die! Luckily, there are a few simple tricks you can do to live a couple years longer! Maybe. For the new exhibition Living Looonger of NEMO Science Museum’s De Studio, KesselsKramer teamed up with illustrator Francesca Albergo to share these life-lengthening hacks with the world.

Be happy, make friends, flush the toilet with the lid down. If you do these simple things every day, you might get very healthy and old! To help you apply these hacks into your daily life, KesselsKramer asked Albergo to create the illustrations. The life hacks featured in the campaign are often simple and weird, yet still there is some scientific truth behind them.

“If you go searching for things you can do to grow old and healthy, you come across an endless list of strategies you can try. Some more outlandish than others. The absurdity of that thought is central to this campaign and provided the perfect starting point for some wacky but easy to follow illustrations”, says Maartje Slijpen, creative director at KesselsKramer. 

Maartje then explains that, because they work with a science museum, everything is science-based. NEMO provided them with a list of life hacks, all backed by scientific research in one way or another. She mentions that “once again, we found that the real world is often many times more surprising than what we come up with. Some life hacks are quite extreme and therefore impossible to photograph. By opting for illustration, we were able to showcase both the more common and the more experimental life-hacks equally”. 

To exaggerate the seriousness of these life hacks, Albergo chose to work with instructional step-by-step illustrations.

Instructional manuals

Albergo found her inspiration in old instructional manuals: “I am honestly a bit obsessed with them and keep collecting illustrated manuals on topics like ‘how to groom a poodle’; ‘how to pantomime’; ‘how to dance tango’; etc. Even though I don’t really want to learn any of these.”  

She then explains that it’s fascinating to her to see the ways people illustrate processes and try to clarify things using graphic elements such as schemes, numbers, sections, textures, arrows and other gimmicks. The idea was to convey the feeling that these illustrations just came out of a weird instructional manual, just like the ones she collects.

Castration

The result is 25 illustrated life hacks, with Francesca’s personal favourite: “‘Castrate yourself’, because it was the funniest to draw. It still makes me laugh every time I see the expression of the man in ‘step 2.”

When it comes to applying some life hacks in her own life, however, she tries to make use of most of the others: “especially taking a lot of naps and drinking coffee. I am still trying to get better at “eat until you are 80% full.”

Campaign

Out of all these simple tricks to possibly extend your life, three life hacks have also been translated into photography. Artist and performer Lisa Schamlé is specialised in creating intense, over-the-top photography, which results in uncomfortable close-up portraits of people going very far to live longer. These portraits are used in the print and online campaign for De Studio’s exhibition.