Goh Cheng Yang (11) visual text analysis

Image:

This poster depicts a person wearing a black shirt, with a tiny bow on the neck, and with numbers on it :1988-???? ,which clearly refers to the year of birth and death, like on a tombstone. The person is strapped with a seatbelt, which covers the year of death, thus the year of death is unknown. There is also a caption at the bottom-right corner of the image, which states "Buckle up, stay alive".

Layout:

The seatbelt covers the date of death, which clearly tells us that the seatbelt is making the year unknown. It means that the seatbelt can prolong our lives. This highly supports the purpose of this poster itself, which is to let people know that seatbelt saves lives. 

Colour:

The person shown in the image is wearing black to signify death, since black=darkness=death. The seatbelt tells us that the seatbelt prolonged this person's life, because the death date is unknown, but the person is wearing black. So this person escaped death.

Words:

The years on this person's shirt resembles the years depicted on a tombstone, and is meant to signify death. This person has an unknown death year, which shows that this person is still alive (caused by the seatbelt). There is a caption at the bottom-right of the image, which tells us the meaning of this poster in case some people do not know, which is almost impossible.

Typographical Features:

The words on the bottom-right corner are small white, and located at the corner to draw the viewers' attention only to the person, the seatbelt and the birth and death years.This brings out the message, and attracts the viewers. If the words are too big, due to the contrast between the white letters and  the black clothing, the viewers will only read the words and ignore the rest of the poster. The words are white because it cannot be seen if it is black, and those people who do not know the meaning will not understand.

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Summary

Purpose: To let people know that wearing seatbelts can prolong life, and get them to wear.

Audience: The general public.

Context: Seatbelts save lives.

Culture: A black shirt is used to express death, along with the birth and death years. The seatbelt is used to show that it saved the user's life.

credited to Kamal's beautiful layout