Research: Digital Media Posters

Alcohol Digital Media Posters Research

This poster caught my eye immediately because it's giving off the exact same kind of message I want to - it's also cleverly produced, because the idea of spin the bottle links in with the consequences of being intoxicated. I also like the design - the poster isn't too complicated and doesn't have too much going on. The concept is simple, and the use of bright colours draws the audience's eye straight to the middle, which is exactly what the group campaigning this wanted. The use of typography is also clear - having the sentence 'don't spin the bottle' in all lowercase letters helps appeal to teenagers, because that's how they usually type, and I can guess that this is aimed at those 18 to around 24 possibly. The bottom sentences aren't too long and take a minute to read, but it also just reiterates what can be seen on the disk in the middle which has the bottle resting on top. It also relies on a tiny bit of humour by saying 'you stand to lost more than just your lunch', because those that drink a lot tend to be sick a lot too.

The use of the empty bottle further shows that the person making these choices are intoxicated because there's no more alcohol in it - they're clearly drunk because they've finished the bottle, and these are the potential consequences of whatever action the intoxicated person may take.

Overall, it's a very clever and well executed poster - it's simple yet has an underlying message which is very clear - poor choices when drunk can result in a lot of different problems. It's appealing to the audience not to be drunk enough not to understand what you're doing and not to be reckless. It also aims to get more people to stop drinking, as it's from the 'Think Don't Drink' campaign.

The use of colour and typography are inspiring for me to want to try out different techniques with my own colour and typography, so I want to do some colour experiments and compare fonts for my posters.

While I know that this poster has a lot more information on it, it looks good at raising the kind of awareness that I want to. It's simple by just explaining the brutality of the harmful effects of alcohol on the body. It doesn't sugarcoat anything, and I think the brutal truth element that this poster has is the kind of thing that I want to do with my posters. It creates fear by explaining everything that alcohol can cause, and is a good persuasive poster on why you shouldn't continue to drink alcohol. The use of the diagram of the body also shows the audience explains what could happen where, so that you know what's going on and what could be affected. There's pretty much nothing that isn't affected, which is accentuated by the diagram.

I think this is clever and straightforward. It details exactly what could happen, and makes the audience think twice about alcohol knowing about all of these things. I want to make my posters simplistic yet also include the right information which will leave an impression on my audience - I don't want too much because I know not everything will be remembered, so I want to write just the right amount in order to have it stick in everyone's mind. I also think the use of colour is eye-catching and directs the focus to the various parts of the body affected by alcohol.

Second Poster Psychotherapy and Rehabilitation Research

Psychotherapy for Treatment of Alcoholism:

This treatment involves counselling with a therapist and aims to help the patient understand themselves, their problems and their motivations better, plus learn how to respond to challenges, take control of their life and learn how to cope healthily. It also helps to increase awareness and self-observation, and encourage them to change how they think and behave to be able to reach their goals.

For alcoholism, psychotherapy looks into the reasons as to why people become dependent on alcohol and use it as a coping mechanism, plus it can also treat combined issues, such as a problem with alcohol and a mental disorder such as anxiety. Psychotherapy always tries to discover the start of the problems and solve them, as a lot of issues are results of things that have happened earlier in the patient's lives which have never been faced. Psychotherapy may also be in the form of group sessions where a number of patient's talk about their problems, which can also be beneficial due to people being able to see that they're not the only ones suffering with this issue, and encourages empathy, altruism and interpersonal skill development. Other forms of psychotherapy also include art or family therapy, which allows people to express their feelings in a better way, or have family members and loved ones accompany them to be able to deal with problems together.

Rehabilitation:

Residential rehabilitation is a drug and alcohol treatment program taking place in a residential setting where typically, the patient is removed from their harmful environment and stops taking drugs or drinking alcohol whilst staying at a center. However, newer forms of rehabilitation includes supported housing provision linked to structured treatment and other local services. Patients who stay for up to 12 weeks in a center focus on intensive therapeutic interventions plus immediate withdrawal symptoms, while those that stay for longer than 12 weeks redevelop life skills, reintegration through education, training or employment-focused needs which allows them to maintain a drug/alcohol free life and receive support. Sometimes, certain rehab organisations offer independent living and supported housing with support and mentoring from their main rehab.

I researched these two methods of alcoholism help because I want to advertise them in my posters. While I looked into the topics in a little more detail, I'm planning to use the most basic information from these paragraphs to accurately and shortly explain on a couple of my posters what they are and what happens, because from the very start I wanted to advertise help so that my audience understand that there's a way back from alcoholism, and that there is a life of sobriety.

Comparison to Alcohol Campaign Posters

1/4

My Posters

This poster is from one of the campaign companies I was looking at before, and even got some of my information from. It uses bright colours and more than one image, with a minimal amount of text in a basic font and small size. In comparison to my posters, I think I have more detail - my fonts are carefully thought out in order to match the themes of my posters, and while I'm not using that many bright colours, the construction of my posters are eye-catching without needing to go over the top. I also think that using these bright colours in the style of this poster takes away the seriousness of the topic. While it has the images of alcohol, and it's only showing the amount of units in one type of each drink, I still don't think it's entirely appropriate to the point of their campaign which is to inform adults everything they can about alcohol. While it's probably done like this to be eye-catching and make you see it, I don't think they took into account that this design doesn't look age appropriate for the target audience when taking the colours.

For my posters, I thought a lot about showing my audience the truth in the most obvious way possible without sugarcoating anything, and advertising help in the same manner. I tried to think about what would be effective if I saw it and incorporate that into my posters, so while not a lot of bright colours are used, I think what I've created is honest and truthful, using really good photos as background. I also think I've used a lot of persuasive techniques to create my posters, so I think the want to use these on my audience stands out.

Campaign Posters

These two posters are from Drink Aware as well, and they look completely different in approach compared with the previous one. They only show text but they use the effect as if the writing is bubbling, like alcohol would. The colours are darker but work effectively with the contrasting colour, which makes the poster stand out. I think my second and fourth posters use the same kind of technique using dark colours, as the second poster juxtaposes white and black in order to advertise psychotherapy, while the fourth poster uses a silhouette and works with colours in the sky but uses white writing. I think that doing this helps highlight the poster in an inverted way, which is still eye-catching and attention-grabbing without having to use bright childish colours to get people to look at it. I think I also use a better choice of font for my text because it matches the theme and look changes the dynamic of the posters from simple to having another layer of complication because it's been well thought about. These posters look like they rushed the font options and chose the most basic one, which is simple and looks alright, but I think with my posters, I've explored font types to figure out what fits my theme for each one and chosen one based on what it can add to them and say about them.

I wanted to look at this poster because it looks similar to what I wanted to do with my first poster. I wanted to have half of my face look okay with the other half injured in order to represent the before and after for being in a drink drive accident as a pedestrian victim. This poster uses the same kind of technique with splitting the screen, although I didn't want to do this with my poster and instead just wanted the photo on my poster to be a symbol. I'm not sure about which campaign company this poster is made by, but it's subtle and clever, plus straight to the point. It's effective because of the minimal detail there is and how straightforward it is. My poster has some facts underneath the photo and the words 'don't drink and drive' either side of it, but I think the way I've created my poster is good too because I wanted to explain some facts to my audience to help educate them on drink driving too.

This poster is from the 'Think! Don't Drink Drive' campaign, and I liked it because of the use of a white background. Posters like this make me realise that sometimes the photo in a poster is enough without changing the background colour. I think that this poster is colourful without looking childish and over the top, so it seems better suited to the age group that these posters usually focus on. I think the use of an animal as well helps more people take notice of the poster, which is why I used a dog on my second poster, because I think it makes people more willing to look at the poster and pay attention to what it's about. I think the highlighted line at the bottom is okay, but I wonder whether it's un-necessary, which is why I was unsure of highlighting words on my second poster. I think the use of the beer glass is also a nice element of the poster because it still manages to tie in alcohol whilst showing a different image. This level of creativity and the ability to incorporate the main theme into another photo being used for the poster is really effective.

Fifth Poster Research

After I created my four main posters, I got some advice to create another one and instead look at the ones I'd researched at the start of the Final Major Project to pick out attributes I liked on them to apply to this new poster. I looked at the two at the top of the page, and the second poster inspired me to look at some more like that one to see how different groups of people have used the idea but changed it to make it their own, which is what I want to do as well.

I looked at this poster first because I'd seen it before but I hadn't reviewed it properly. I think it's subtle but clever, because there's not too much going on but it's still informative. The labels are on the right hand side and they correspond with the body part that is effected in order from head to toe. I really like the way this is done, and I want to do something similar by labelling what happens to the body. I don't know if I would add any more information to each part, and I won't show the body parts, but this is the kind of route I want to go with.

However, I then looked at this poster, and I liked the use of black and white with a small splash of colour with the titles for each little paragraph explains what happens to each body part whilst drinking alcohol. I think it's target is more for girls because of the style of the poster, with the typography in a fancy font, and with the titles in pink. The photo itself looks like it's from a teenage girl's or a woman's magazine because of the way the model is posing. I also like the way that the poster isn't afraid to mix up the placement of their paragraphs instead of playing it safe and having it in a vertical list. I also like the fact that each part of the body is explained and how the alcohol harms it because it doesn't look like a lot to read but it's still informative. The informal style of not using full sentences also makes it more readable because it skips some of the less important words, which most people naturally do when reading in their head anyway - it's like the paragraphs are written as basic short notes, so it's not too much to have to read and process.

Alcohol Health Research

I wanted to find information about the impact alcohol has on both mental and physical health, and I knew I had some pages on my bibliography that I had yet to use, which I wanted to look at. Below are screenshots of some of the information I found, which if I use, I know I obviously have to write in my own words. I wanted to look at some parts of the information in more detail to determine what I should use for my poster.

This information comes from this website, and I was intrigued reading about it because of how much of a problem alcohol really is on health. Reading about the amount of hospital admissions and the number of deaths where alcohol was a contributing actor, I was amazed at how severe the issue of alcoholism really is, and I think these types of figures are enough to scare people into getting help for their addiction. I think the amount of money alcohol costs the NHS is also significantly high, so I'm glad I've chosen this topic. While this website gives facts about health, it doesn't go into that much detail about the different problems alcohol causes, which is what I want to focus on with this poster. It mentions different medical conditions, but it doesn't explain what alcohol does to the body in order for these conditions to exist.

1/3

All three of these screenshots are taken from the same website because this page goes into a lot of detail on mental health damage when drinking alcohol, which I wanted to look at in addition to physical health. I think this website is useful for explaining the problems with mental health such as anxiety, depression and psychosis plus self-harm and suicide because it goes into detail about how alcohol affects you in different ways and what happens in the brain to create these thoughts and feelings. I want to use a line from each to briefly explain the mental health problems which can be faced but I don't want to focus on writing too much because I want the information I present to be informative and interesting without rambling on too much.

From the same website but a different page, I also wanted to read up on some of the physical health problems alcohol causes, such as alcohol poisoning which I looked into a little more, and then a list of other problems too which I want to mention. Alcohol poisoning can be one of the worst outcomes from intoxication depending on the severity of the condition - it may end in a trip to the hospital, but there's also been a lot of cases where people die from it. I think that mentioning this on my poster will help create some fear for my audience. The other problems on the second screenshot is also things I want to mention, although I'm not sure as to whether to write a line about each one or just list them.

1/2

I think this website is probably one of the best for the information I'm looking for because it explains a whole lot of what happens from drinking too much alcohol, and the information is well presented as well as being short and sweet. For my poster, I either want to list each problem from drinking or write a line about them, although now I think I'll only do that if I think an explanation is needed. The website above covers a range of alcohol-caused issues without rambling on, which I think is the perfect amount of information.

List of Health Problems that Alcohol Contributes To:

From:

Liver Damage

Liver Failure

Liver Disease

Pancreatitis

Oesophageal Cancer and Oropharyngeal Cancer

Arthritis

Heart Disease

Hyperglycemia (High Blood Sugar) and Hypoglycemia (Low Blood Sugar)

Kidney Disease

Obesity

Nervous Disorders

Psychological Disturbances

Malnutrition

High Blood Pressure

Shrunken Arteries

Fertility Problems

Stunted Bone Growth (in teenagers)

Osteoporosis (weakens bones - in older people)

Losing sense of smell

Brain shrinks over time (Frontal Cortex and Hippocampus are heavily affected)

Other:

Diabetes

Alcohol Poisoning

I went through a process to research oesophageal cancer and oropharyngeal cancer, which started off with finding where each one develops in the body. I found out from a page on the charity Cancer Research UK's website explaining where oesophageal cancer starts, because while it would probably click in some people's minds, it may not in so I wanted to write a short and simple explanation for it.

I then wanted to find out how alcohol caused this cancer, so I continued looking at the Cancer Research UK website for information on it. I found the information to the left, explaining that drinking more than the recommended alcohol unit guideline for each week can increase the risk of getting it. I thought this was interesting because although alcohol may not the cause of some types of cancer, it's a fact can play a strong part, as with the part it plays in all of the health issues lists.

I found out some more information from another page on the Cancer Research UK website.

The information I found for my short explanation of oropharyngeal cancer.

Theories on why alcohol can cause cancer, taken from a page from the Drink Aware website.

Holly Powell - Final Major Project