Class Questions

I think that the idea that the message itself is what matters and not how it is portrayed is a good one, but not necessarily the case in our society today, unfortunately. There is a reason that so mnay products mentioned in the articles we read are popular and sold despite their terrible gas mileage, or expensive prices, or history with sweat shops. People like products and are influenced highly by the images the products give off and the messages we retain from the way the products or ideas are presented.

There is a poster I remember seeing in my anatomy classroom in high school that had a dead girl's corpse laying on a slab in a morgue. She was all discolored and gross looking. The message had something to do with smoking. It was saying she smoked to be skinny and look cool or something to that affect, does she look cool now, is she pretty? It was something like that. Now, this message is a good one. It's telling kids not to smoke and I would understand that message probably no matter how it was written or portrayed. the poster could have been white with black writing saying SMOKING IS BAD. This is a true statement, and seeing the girl isn't going to make me less apt to smoke than I would be anyway, but it stuck. I do still remember this poster and we use to notice it every day when we walked into class because it was so gruesome looking and stuck out even though we saw it everyday. That does show that for someone who may be considering smoking, maybe this ad would have made a difference. Maybe seeing the girl and being reminded in that way every day could make a difference. It sticks out much more than just the words smoking is bad. It provides an image and makes you think about it more. Attracting one's attention is half the battle of getting a message across, and this is what design and advertising does.