Designs for health and safety posters

Here are some screenshots of the designs I've got so far! I've gone for a sort of traffic light theme, the red and amber/orange are things you shouldn't do, and the green is something you must do!

This one is trying to discourage swearing in the workplace, as this can be offensive and often distracting for collegues. The main 'pushing point' of this poster is that children will usually copy swear words from adults and this could postentially corrupt them for future development (bit extreme, I know, but if it gets the point across...). The red background grabs the target audience's (TA's) attention and the image draws the eye in. I won't be able to use this image on my final designs as it's not my image and therefore is probably copyrighted, but I used it to illustrate my point in these designs and give me a better idea of what the poster could look like. I would hope to get a similar image, or possibly of a mother covering her childs ears, something along those lines, for my final design. I used only three colours so not to confuse / dazzle the TA, adding a simple yet effective border to make the poster stand out even more. I coloured parts of the text white or black to make them stand out from the rest of the sentence, to emphasize these specific words. The black and white text stands out from the background, although it might be a good idea to make the fact part of the text a little bigger as from a distance it might not be easily readable. Having said that, that part of the text is not what is meant to grab the reader, that is just there to reinforce the point of the poster. The text font is Helvetica, which is purposefully easy to read, not fancy, just very simple. The weight of the text is not too heavy so it is hard to read, but it isn't to light either, it's about right so it looks sharp and snappy. The layout of the poster is good I think, because there's not too much going on, the poster isn't too full, nor too empty. I think there is a good balance between the amount of text and amout of image, after all, its an informative poster, but the picture illustrates the point. The colours are all very sharp and they contrast so everything is easy to see. I think this poster could engage the reader in 2-3 seconds and is interesting enough to keep their attention.

Overall, I think this is a strong design, but could easily be strengthened further by changing the imagery and making the small text a little bigger. I have already changed the text at the top from black to white as I think this looks better and makes the text 'pop'.

This design is to discourage spitting in the workplace. I have kept the same tagline as the above design, and the same layout...and also the same general theme of it being childish. Again, I cannot use this image in my final design but I hope to get an image that is similar - of a child spitting. There is a fact about spitting, which is rather extreme but if it illustrates the point..! During the design process I changed the background to a brighter, more orange shade rather thatn the yellowy amber colour it was, in order for it to stand out more. The line at the bottom of the poster is related to the general theme of spitting and the fact above it, so is very relavent and again, reinforces the point of not spitting.

Because of the similarities between these first two posters, my analysis of this poster is very similar when it comes to layout, clarity of visual communication and attention to detail, so please see above analysis!

The overall aesthetic value of this poster is pretty good. It stands out, delivers the information needed in a simple yet effective and easy to read format. It's bright and the colours contrast to make them easily readable. There is a good text / image balance, not too much of either one. Grabs the readers attention, snappy, informative, bold. Spot on.

 

This poster design has the same layout as the previous two designs, with a title, image, tagline, fact and finally, I supoose it's classed as another tagline...or maybe a final and definite point. This poster completes the traffic light theme, but being green, I thought it would be more appropriate to make it about something postive that workers SHOULD be doing, for example, focusing! If it was a positive colour but was telling the workers about something negavite that they shouldn't be doing, then this would be very confusing and a little misleading. So this is to promote somthing that the workers should be doing all the time, but also alerts them to what could happen if they don't focus. Maybe the factual text could be a little bigger on this design, but the bright colour really grabs your attention, and subconsciously gives you a positive feel for the information on there, making the workers more likely to follow the instructions / rules of the workplace. The other factors I'd need to analyse are pretty much the same as the previos two designs - text, layout etc, so refer to above. The overall aesthetic value of this poster design is good, it's bright and eye catching, illustrates it's point well, the text stands out and is easy to read. Fabulous!