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Graphic Design
Smoking is Cool Poster
Bit sick...even for me. Here's my thinking. I was 'inspired' by an old smoking advertisement I saw on the internet. There is a copy below. I just couldn't quite get my head around the concept that 50 years ago you could say pretty much ANYTHING you liked to sell a product. Even a product as lethal as cigarettes. So, this got me thinking about a new project for a Sunday afternoon. What would it be like if the connection between smoking and an early death had never been made or what if people just didn't care? I wanted to give myself the full power of an advertiser in the 1950s by producing a poster for cigarettes with no restrictions on what I can say. Please don't hate me for this...
I wanted to use a lot of advertising and graphic design 'tricks' to make the viewer feel that smoking is just about the best thing they could do. So I sorted out my strapline as 'Smoking is Cool'. Probably the worst thing you could say about it, apart from 'it makes you live longer' I guess. With my strapline sorted I started to look for images to work with. You'd be surprised how few images there are on the internet of glamorous or cool people smoking but I eventually managed to find four images I was happy with.
The larger image of the side of the woman's head, where she is exhaling the smoke, was the perfect base for the poster. It was black and white anyway but I applied a 'gentle' posterisation effect to it. I gave it the red border and then left it at that. Next came the three further images of the young, smart and sexy people. The images of these that weren't in greyscale were adjusted to black and white and then the same level of posterisation was applied to each image. I added the white border to each one to make sure they stood out on the poster. Afterall, this is my main message. These are the people you want to be, they smoke, you smoke...sick huh?
At this stage I was working with an olive green background but I took the decision to change this to a classic black. I'm glad I took this decision because I believe it makes it that much more 'appealing' and with an uneasy air of sophistication.
Next step was to add the text. I found a great 'smokey' font which I think works really well. I changed the full stop at the end of the text to blue as well. This is something else you probably wouldn't notice at first glance of the poster but sub-conciously it repeats the message in your brain that you are looking at something cool. I also added my own cigarette packet and decided to call the brand 'Corrosive Strike'...what else? I wanted to use just a simple shape to be my brand 'emblem' and settled on the one you can see there now.
Finally a sports car to top it all off. This is an image of a modern replica of an old two-seater sports car which I converted to greyscale and then altered the colour balance until it was the cool blue colour it is now. Combined with my brand emblem and the 'racing car' font I chose for my brand I think it is a good, strong brand image. It helps to further promote the idea that smokers are successful, full of adventure and, most of all, cool.
Click on image to view large version (Lightbox)
So this probably isn't sitting very comfortably with you now. I would like to state again that it is an experiment in graphic design and I, in no way, believe that smoking is cool. I just wanted to remove the boundaries of taste and decency to see where I could go with it. I am very pleased with the outcome of this project as I have fully achieved what I had set out to do.
