Social Issue PSA

Billboard

Poster

The social issue I hope to bring attention to was police brutality. This is an issue that I find often occupies the news for a short period of time when a major incident occurs, but is quickly forgotten before any serious legislative action can be taken. Police brutality is caused by many things, but one of the reasons many cases are not taken seriously by courts of the law is a lack of concrete visual or auditory evidence, and that is the specific issue I wanted to discuss in my ads. Very few police departments have police cameras on their officers and their cars and even fewer have a mandatory policy on keeping the cameras on during a confrontation. This has led to guilty parties being let free and innocent officers being sent to jail and it can be fixed so easily, if someone takes the initiative, which is why I want to bring more attention to this often neglected issue.

I hope to raise awareness for the cause of ending cases of police brutality and I want to start a movement aimed at getting body cameras on police officers. It has been proven that a change as small as that can make a huge difference in saving lives and I think that is an important cause to fight for.

My target audience is people who are fairly unaware of issues of police brutality and the negative impact a lack of body cameras on police has on the public and police officers. By leaving the middle of the picture blank, it allows the viewer of the ad to imagine the possible scenarios of what could be occurring and how it can affect anyone, even them.

My Unique Selling Proposition is that my ad is not focused on the picture, but rather what is not in the picture. The audience can see that is an average street one might find anywhere but what's important about the picture isn't what is happening, and instead what isn't happening. The ad gives the audience cues for what they could be seeing, but the audience's imagination fills in the rest.

My slogan/tagline is #endpolicebrutality, because at the end of the day, that is what I am fighting for. Even bigger than putting body cameras on police for me is ending the ceaseless unnecessary violence by those in a position of power against others.

I'm proud of this assignment turned out because I think it looks like an ad I might see on the internet or on an actual billboard and that was very important to me. I had difficulty deciding if I wanted my picture to be in color or in black and white and I ended up selecting black and white because it created a higher sense of unity between the images and lent a more severe look to the ads.

Some advice I'd give to someone else creating this project would be not to go too complicated. It is important to make the ad compelling and interesting to look at, but if it's too complicated the audience might not be able to comprehend it or it might become too chaotic and not aesthetically pleasing.

I like how I designed the ads, but the hardest thing was definitely taking a picture where I had to focus more on creating a photo that had interesting and nicely composed edges, but not paying nearly as much attention to the content of the center of the photograph.