Week 4 // Persuasive Posters // #oneperday2020
Persuasive poster ideas warning people about the dangers of drink driving.
Image 11
Wanna Drink And DrIvE With Your Friends? - Idea
Tools: 2B Pencil, Plastic Eraser, Ruler, 110gsm Cartridge Paper, Photoshop
Technique: Hatching, Cross-hatching, Irony, Paradox
Process: I used a 2B pencil for this first iteration of the drink driving persuasive campaign poster. Before doing the poster concept itself, I created the poster border outline using the pencil and a ruler. I then started creating the front view of a car then drawing the people inside it. Hatching and cross-hatching shading was used before putting the call to action text "Wanna drink and drive with your friends?" on the lower half of the poster. This text, along with the imagery, is a demonstration of the rhetorical figures irony and paradox which make the poster more effective as a persuasive campaign towards the target audience of young adults. Photoshop was used at the end to increase the brightness and contrast of the image for better viewing digitally; this would be repeated for the rest of the images.
Reflection: I like the idea of using irony and paradox to create a persuasive poster against drinking driving. The design itself is quite simplistic as it features the driver drunkenly waving his beer in the car with a passenger, whom I made into a skeleton, which gets the idea across that by drink driving, you'll also be putting others in danger as well. I think it also suits the target audience of young adults really well since the dark humour of emphasising the 'DIE' letters from "drive" is quite popular among that target demographic (as opposed to families with young kids or over 70's).
Image 12
Wanna DrIvE To Our Graves? - Idea
Tools: 2B Pencil, Plastic Eraser, Ruler, 110gsm Cartridge Paper, Photoshop
Technique: Hatching, Cross-hatching, Irony, Paradox
Process: Like the first image, I used a 2B pencil as I drew the outline of the poster using a ruler before starting the poster idea itself. I decided to re-use the campaign idea from Image 11 except this time from the perspective inside the car. I drew the driver and skeleton from behind as they drive towards their graves, with the text "Wanna drive to our graves?" emphasising that notion. Hatching and cross-hatching were used again for the shading since it's simple and effective for these sketches.
Reflection: I think I prefer this iteration of the drink driving persuasive poster over the first iteration since there's more detail in this version. There's a lot of details inside the car, such as the car touch screen interface saying "bye" as if to further confirm the characters' demise. I also think the overall composition is much stronger here since the rule of thirds is clearly placed here with the two characters on the sides of the composition as they surround the centre text, which gives the text more attention and spotlight.
Image 13
Drink Driving? Bye. - Idea
Tools: 2B Pencil, Plastic Eraser, Ruler, 110gsm Cartridge Paper, Photoshop
Technique: Hatching, Cross-hatching, Hyperbole
Process: The process for this third iteration is the same as the previous two; using a 2B pencil throughout, I started the outline of the poster then started drawing the poster concept itself until it was finished with hatching and cross-hatching shading. Unlike the other two images however, I have the text placed on the top left of the poster rather than somewhere in the centre since I have the large beer bottle taking up a majority of the composition.
Reflection: I decided to try using hyperbole as the main rhetorical figure for this persuasive poster instead. I suppose it's effective in conveying the message that drink driving is bad, but the composition itself seems flooded as the enlarged bottle takes up a lot of the poster as it spills blood (it doesn't look like blood since no colours are used) to cause the driver's death. The composition needed to be different as I have the view of the car from a side perspective, so I needed to have something to fill up the top area of the poster. The call to action text "Drink driving? Bye." works, but the usage of rhetorical questions in the first two posters are probably more effective in conveying the message to the target audience of young adults as this poster doesn't show that their actions could affect other people.
Image 14
Wanna Drink And DrIvE? - BW + One Colour Poster
Tools: Illustrator
Technique: Digital Rendering, Vector Art
Process: I decided to use Image 12's concept combined with Image 11's tagline for the fully rendered persuasive poster as it's more dynamic in conveying the message to the target audience of young adults. Illustrator was used to create this poster. After importing the initial sketch into Illustrator, I basically traced over it by using the pen and rectangle tool to recreate the sketch outline. I would use layers to allow me to choose which shapes would overlap on top of another to recreate the concept in the skin. Afterwards, I added the call-to-action text at the bottom.
Reflection: I think using a vector-based aesthetic for this poster is effective since it's quite minimalist which allows the audience to pay attention to the areas with colour that act as focal points. Since this poster only uses one colour and values between black and white, the red stands out heavily as it emphasises the grave, 'danger' word, and the 'DIE' letters in the poster. By doing so, I'm also taking advantage of the poster's concept of using fear-based appeal towards the audience as it aims to discourage them from drink driving.
Image 15
Wanna Drink And DrIvE? - Full Colour Poster
Tools: Illustrator
Technique: Digital Rendering, Vector Art
Process: The process is the exact same as Image 14 as it uses the same Illustrator file. However, this time I made changes to the colour as I use a predominantly blue colour scheme for this poster. I didn't make changes to the word 'danger' and 'DIE' letters as I still want those features to be focal points in this poster. The added blue colour is there to further complement the red colour by creating contrast between the two colours.
Reflection: The full colour version is still pretty effective in conveying the dangers of drink driving in my opinion. But, I think the black and white version does a better job as the contrast there is much more apparent with red being the only colour in the poster. The black and white colours create a flashback effect where the audience is viewing the scene in retrospective as they watch the skeleton passenger and drive drive to their graves. The full colour version on the other hand, creates an effect where the audience is immersed in the poster. While this immersion is powerful, the black and white version, being reminiscent of a flashback, plants a 'what-if' notion to the audience; what if they didn't drink and drive, wouldn't they avoid their fates of driving to their graves? This distinction between the audience being an observer rather than a participant the black and white poster more powerful in my opinion.
