Whilst navigating our way through this current state of crisis, what’s becoming more apparent is the need for drastic behavioural change. As we learn to be apart together, there are a whole host of natural, everyday things we need to change.

From crossing the street to avoid oncoming pedestrians to staying inside our homes and waving out of windows rather than stopping for a chat, the coronavirus crisis has significantly altered the way we connect with each other.

Part of this shift extends to our own understanding of hygiene. Where once you may have thought you’d learnt how to wash your hands at school, the NHS and government guidelines that emerged demonstrated that actually, very few of us were doing it properly, for long enough or with enough care.

This also stretches to reimagining our relationship with those bits of technology that have become an extension of our hands, the smartphone. According to Apple and a study conducted by research firm Scout, the typical mobile user unlocks the phone around 80 times every day and touches the screen 2,617 times.

Touch screens are, arguably, one of the dirtiest objects we come into contact with every day. When a clean phone is a health and safety issue for each and every one of us, it is a fact we cannot afford to ignore.

To help alter people’s everyday behaviour, a London-based creative duo, Renato Tata and Stefania Esposito, have created a series of temporary phone wallpapers entitled #AntiCovid19Screensaver. The imagery acts as a reminder to the user that, when their screen illuminates, they need to wash their hands, and in turn disinfect their phones. Because one action is worthless without the other.

The idea began on the pair’s Instagram, as a peer to peer project which invited friends to screenshot the story and save the wallpaper for themselves. The pair have said of the project that, “As creative individuals, we felt the responsibility to put what we can into preventing the spread of COVID-19.”

The project is a demonstration of how brilliant creativity can produce a simple solution to something that matters now more than ever: fighting and containing the global pandemic.

Visit the #AntiCovid19Screensaver website to download the wallpapers for free.