The goal of this project was to come up with two posters that stated the opposite idea of one another. To start off, we had to make a matrix that would give a variety of connotative and denotative aspects of the statement I wanted to make. The matrix was split up into categories and different techniques to be applied to each category. For my project, I wanted to loosely base my poster on the idea of smoking, so I would end up with a pro-smoking and then anti-smoking poster. First off, I had to make a postcard that I would then put into the matrix and edit to get more variations. My initial postcard was one of the Marlboro men, and the statement “Be Cool.” The postcard would be promoting the idea of smoking because it would be linking the action to the idea of being recognized as cool. Once in the matrix, I had to make substitutions, transpositions, additions, and deletions to the postcard. For the political category I substituted the Marlboro man with a picture of Che Guevara smoking, and for the cultural category I used Angelina Jolie. I wanted my final posters to have shock value and sex appeal, as in this day those two elements are sought after in the marketing industry for being most seductive to the audience.
For my final posters, as I mentioned before, I wanted to use shock value and sex appeal to make the statement more concrete to the receptive audience. The idea was to convey the idea of smoking being cool, and to get people to smoke by telling them their ideal mate is a smoker and will find you more attractive if you also smoke. I thought a male audience was most likely going to be the most receptive to a pro-smoking ad so I used a photograph of an attractive woman smoking with the statement “your dream girl”. This was, of course, the sex appeal aspect of the statement. For the anti-smoking statement I wanted to use shock value; to make the audience realize the ugly nature of smoking, so of course I used a child. The anti-smoking poster has a picture of a very young girl with a cigarette in hand, as well as the statement “your dream girl?” the substitution of the period from the pro-smoking ad with the question mark makes all the difference in the statement itself.
Anti-smoking statement.
Pro-smoking statement.
