Behind the Earth Day 2025 poster

This article first appeared in our Earth Day 2025 issue of My Green Pod Magazine, published 22 April. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox

This year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day – and the Earth Day poster tradition that has been running in tandem with the environmental movement since 1970.

The very first Earth Day poster was designed by Robert Rauschenberg; it featured a bald eagle flanked by images of endangered species, deforestation and pollution.

They were powerful visuals of issues that required immediate action in 1970, just as they do today.

The posters that followed have carried this message forward, with each artist adding their unique voice to the global environmental conversation.

Art to inspire

For 2025, the artwork has been created by Connecticut-based artist Alexis Rockman; his design (see opposite page), with an image of a forest and a solar panel rising above a celebratory crowd of people, perfectly captures Earth Day’s 2025 theme: Our Power, Our Planet.

The imagery has been designed to invoke hope; it combines the beauty of nature with the promise of a cleaner, greener future for all – while at the same time underscoring the role of art in mobilising action for our planet.

‘Humans are an almost entirely visual species, and art can – and should – convey complex and highly emotional images that go directly to our hearts’, Alexis shares. ‘After listening carefully to the Earth Day team, I felt this image of a forest and a diverse crowd of people reflected in a solar panel conveyed the idea of solar power being the best direction collectively for our needs, with the least impact on the rest of the planet. There is still time to make a difference.’

Solving challenges

Alexis has used his art to raise awareness about the environment since the beginning of his career in the mid-1980s.

‘At the time I believed that the challenges humanity faced could be solved through education and that if humans were exposed to the science and data of what climate change was going to bring to their world, then they would respond with the appropriate swiftness to turn things around’, Alexis tells us. ‘It was a long and hard lesson to understand that humans are primarily tribal, emotional and not the most logical species.’

As a visual artist, Alexis realised he had a unique opportunity to tell stories through pictures and appeal to human emotions.

His work, exploring nature, science and human impact, has been exhibited globally, including at the Venice Biennale, Carnegie Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.