Positive WWF Campaign Posters

Below are the posters I produced for WWF that try and use positivity as an encouragement to donate as an alternative to using guilt and fear.

 

Influences From Research

• Using full colour avoids the ghostly, horror-film connotations of black and white mentioned in my first hand research, and is better than monotone or duotone because it removes the over-reliance of colour-based connotations.
• Using the Panda in the campaign is important as it sets the precedent for the other animals. People know that the Panda is endangered (some/most will know the rhino is endangered too), but not that the Golden Lion Tamarin Monkey is endangered. By using them in the same recognisable campaign you give the monkey the same connotations as the Panda, as discussed in my essay based on Hamish Pringle's Celebrity Sells.
• I avoided using leading questions, because my my first hand research suggests that they were effective at making people feel guilty. Combined with innocent looking images I could have accidentally made people feel guilty by using leading questions in the same way that the text on the "Would You Care More" campaign turns it from a fun campaign to a guilt-inducing one.
• Keeping the images as the main focus and only having small text was done because my my first hand research suggested that less text makes people think more, which makes sense given that a picture can paint a thousand words.
• I used some statistical evidence because my first hand research suggested that they were effective at creating guilt within a campaign that was meant to create guilt. On that basis they should be effective at creating encouragement and positivity in a campaign that intends to do create these things.

Relevance To My Essay

"There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social, and cultural crises demand our attention."
Adbusters (2000)

"WWF's founders were aware of the need for a strong, recognisable symbol that would overcome all language barriers."
WWF (2015)

"A member of the audience, some research has shown, cannot be affected by the media if they do not fulfil or gratify a need. For instance, if a person leads an active, varied life, and is secure and stable, no amount of advertising which appeals to fears of loneliness or being a social outcast, or to social snobbery will succeed."
(Dyer, 1982)

"Given the power of fear to motivate and direct our thoughts, there is much potential for abuse."
(Aronson & Pratkanis 1997)

Design Decisions

Image Choices

All the photographs were chosen because the faces of the animals weren't in the centre. This gave me more room for manoeuvrability in terms of having the room to place text or any other images on top them. The panda and monkey in particular were suitable because the way the photographs are composed leave a large space at the bottom of the page that can be used without hampering the animal.

Font Choices

The font for the years is WWF Regular, WWF's custom font that is used on their website for all the titles. It's somewhat distinctive through how narrow it is and it's thin tracking. The thin tracking means that when a stroke is put around the text, the strokes sometimes meet, which aids readability as it removes the colour from any image behind it. The smaller text is Open Sans, which is the font used on WWF's website for their body copy, their was no need to change this as it is plain enough not to offer any distractions from the photographs. Using black and white keeps the text clear through the contrast with the photographs, as well as is matching the distinctive WWF logo.

Layout Choices

I chose to use 5 columns because it meant the bars would be a width that would work at big heights and small heights without making them look to fat or too thin. The WWF logo is placed in the 5th column above the highest bar to try and link it with the success of the taller bar. The bars are slightly translucent to suggest an element of frailty so as not to suggest the conservation work is finished. The longer sentences were placed on the left below the bars to try and balance the page a bit, as the the taller bars were on the right. The shorter sentence is next to the logo to link it with WWF in general rather than a specific animal.