Sophie Chatell-LEAP #1
Propaganda Poster
Cigarette Butts: Our Unknown Problem
When I first saw this project, I wanted to do my own spin on some type of propaganda I see everyday. When I think about propaganda in my everyday life, the first idea that comes to mind is any anti-vaping or smoking commercials. When I saw this project, I thought it would be a great idea to showcase my own version of an anti-smoking piece of propaganda! When I took a look at the website that the assignment provided, I saw one of the top posts was about disposing cigarette butts. I read that cigarette butts are the most littered item on the planet and I quickly remembered how I learned about this in my living by the ocean course last semester! I was blown away by the number that the website provided. To have as many as trillions of butts at the end of a year is crazy to think about. There are only around seven billion people on the planet! The cigarette butts outnumber the people by trillions!!!
My strategy when making this form of propaganda was to intensify the details related to smoking. By intensifying this topic, I could get the target audience to really understand the dangers of this action and of littering cigarette butts. My target audience for this poster was the smoking community. This is because smokers are the poeple who are causing this problems. Smokers are leaving their cigarette butts and they need to be informed of this problem so their opinion on smoking can potientally change. Although, the target audience can also include the entire public because some people do not know how much of a problem this is. This poster can inform both smokers and non-smokers on the dangers of littering cigarettes. This poster can inform anyone on the dangers our environment faces due to cigarette butts. The target audience can be any age of people. Everyone has access to cigarettes and even those under age can find a way of getting access to them. This poster was designed to draw in the eyes of any smoker and interest any person concerned about the earth and envoirnment. This creates a really large target group, meaning that this propaganda has the chances of positively changing a lot of peoples minds about smoking and making the environment a better place.
There were many things that I learned about propaganda so far this semester that I applied to this project. As I already mentioned, I attempted to use the strategy of intesifying in order to draw people into the message and cause. I specifically did this by focusing on the composition of my website. I made sure to use creative design in different varaitions in order to create patterns that people would be drawn to. I used very large, eye grabbing graphics in order to pull in viewers. The skull was put on the poster in order to intensify what smoking actually does for a person and the envoirnment around it. I thought this graphic would scare users and also motivate users to read the rest of the poster. This skull is a great strategy designed ro make users feel guilty for there smoking and scare users by implying what will happen if you continue to smoke. I tried to stick with a color theme when creating the poster so it was organized, easy to read and easily stuck out to viewers. I used the colors black, white and red in order to have structure in my poster. I tried to use simple colors with inclusion of one color that would pop. My strategy with this was to emphasize certain phrases that would really poke at the user. The phrases outlined were highlighted in order to enstill fear, guilt and negativity into the viewers minds. I wanted viewers to look at the poster and realize the damage they were doing to those around them.
I used repetition through the design by putting an annoying amount of cigarette butts all over the poster. My goal, was that through this repitition people would focus on how dirty and overhwelming cigarettes are for everyone else in society who doesn’t smoke them. The repitition of the cigarette butts were used in order to really emphasize the statistic being shared. Four trillion is an enourmous amount that some people can’t even begin to understand. I thought putting a very large amount of the cigarette butts on the poster would help users understand how frusteraing this littering is for those all who have to interact with it. The cigarettes were repeated in order to emphasize how many there truly are laying around on our planet.
Another strategy I used was one of the seven propaganda devices, identified as name calling. This is when you use labels with negative connotation in order to evoke strong emotion that favor a specific agenda. I used colors that I associate with negativity in hopes that users would also make this correlation. Words that cause guilt are highlighted in red in order to pop out. By using these negative connotations such as “do better” “problem” “littered”, I was hoping to come across in a negative way that showed users that the point of creating the poster was to prevent smoking and littering. I also associated the topic with symbols I view in a negative way. A skull usually represents negativity or death and this is the message I intended on giving off. I was hoping to provoke fear and guilt. By looking at the smoke of a cigarette turn to a symbol for death, will very much allow for users to second guess there actions. The goal is that after looking at this poster, those who smoke will feel guilty for all the cigarette butts they have left behind in there lifetime. This poster is potraying smoking as negative and dangerous in order to help users fear smoking. By learning the damages that can be caused by smoking, not just on the body but on the planet, others could potentially be motivated to change there opinion on this topic.
I enjoyed the creativity I got to use when creating this poster. I love thinking of various graphics and fonts that can be used in order to communicate the desired message best! I had a fun time brainstorming different ideas and thinking what would most attract viewers. One thing I struggled with was creating language to use in the poster. I didn't want to be too aggressive with my language and offend any of the viewers. However, I did want to use language that was affective. Balancing between this was a struggle for me. Overall, I enjoyed making this piece of propaganda and think that it could potentially change the mindsets of some smokers out there!
Sources:
