The Recycled Poster
The sustainability committee has designed an A3 poster for the main foyer. It shows a plastic bottle half-buried in sand, photographed from a low angle. The headline, in bold white sans-serif, reads “ONE BOTTLE. 450 YEARS.” A QR code and the school logo sit bottom-right on a gradient from deep blue to black. The committee has three days before printing and a $60 budget. Two members disagree: one wants to add a smiling student holding a reusable bottle; the other says that will weaken the message. The poster will be seen by 1,200 students and visitors, including Year 9s and parents on open evening. The principal has asked that it not be “too depressing” because it will hang near the awards display. The committee must decide before Thursday’s print deadline.
1. Explain how two visual techniques work together to position the viewer. Refer to specific details from the poster.
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Two techniques work together: low-angle photography and colour contrast. The low angle makes the half-buried bottle look large and monumental, almost like a marker or a warning. The bottle is not shown as litter on the surface; it is embedded in sand, which suggests permanence. The gradient from deep blue to black reinforces that permanence: the background is cold, depthless, and unnatural, so the bottle sits in a space that feels like the bottom of the ocean.
The bold white sans-serif headline, “ONE BOTTLE. 450 YEARS,” adds a factual contrast: the first sentence is tiny in scale, the second huge in time. The full stop after each phrase makes the claim feel blunt and final. Together, the techniques position the viewer to see a single everyday object as a long-term problem. The likely purpose is to interrupt the viewer’s habit of ignoring plastic waste; the effect is more persuasive because the poster does not show a person, so the viewer has no character to look at instead of the message.
2. Decide whether the committee should add the smiling student holding a reusable bottle. Justify your decision with reference to audience and purpose, and propose a compromise if needed.
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Adding the smiling student would change the poster’s argument. A smiling student holding a reusable bottle introduces social proof: it shows the desired behaviour and gives Year 9s a model. For that audience, a human face can make the message less abstract and more approachable.
But the poster’s current strength is that it makes the consequence the hero; the bottle is monumental, and the viewer cannot look away. A smiling student would create a second focal point and could shift the message from “this is a 450-year problem” to “buy a reusable bottle and feel good.” That is a weaker argument because it individualises a systems issue.
Judgement: do not add the smiling student to the main image. A compromise is to add a small caption under the QR code: “Refill stations: six on site.” That keeps the consequence dominant while giving viewers an action. The choice depends on purpose: if the purpose were to recruit volunteers, the student image would help; for a foyer poster about waste, the bottle should stay the focal point.
3. Suggest one change that addresses the principal’s concern without weakening the environmental message. Explain why your change is better than simply removing the bottle image.
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The principal’s concern is that the poster is “too depressing” near the awards display. The risk is that viewers turn away from a message that offers only guilt. One change is to add a short action line in the same sans-serif font: “Six refill stations. Use them.” This addresses the concern without weakening the environmental message because it keeps the bottle and the 450-year claim intact. It shifts the poster from pure warning to warning plus agency.
A second option is to change the headline to “ONE BOTTLE. 450 YEARS. ONE REFILL.” This keeps the contrast and the factual claim but adds a solution. The reasoning is that the principal is not asking to remove the message; she is asking for a tone that works in a public, celebratory space. The best change is the one that preserves the poster’s central visual argument - the monumental bottle - while giving the viewer a clear, feasible next step. Adding a smiling student would solve the tone problem but at the cost of the message, so the action line is the more precise fix.