Critical Writing A social semiotics poster is a poster that is thought-provoking for the viewer. The topic of the poster can be any major or minor problem that we see occurring in society. The assignment I was given had no words on the poster, which made it a little more difficult to make sure the message got through to the viewer. The objectives of this project were four. The first was to explore ideation, Gestalt and semiotic principles using images. Second, communicate a point of view. The third was to use semiotic concepts to modify and rearrange an image to communicate a message. Fourth, finally, experiment with the poster format. We could design our own poster or create one online on our computers. The final idea for my project took almost all of two weeks of work on the project. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay I started by simply writing a list of the type of poster I wanted to create. I wanted it to be memorable and hard to watch because it was so emotional. Then I just started researching. I googled the social issues of today's society and wrote down all the ones that seemed interesting to me. I also looked at images to brainstorm on. In the end I had at least ten topics to base my project on. I started coming up with ideas for all ten in my head and picking out the ones that wouldn't really work for me, until I had just a few more topics to work with. Some of the topics I was leaning towards were: homeless veterans and refugee housing, an educator's low salary, hunger, suicide, and cyberbullying. I sketched out ideas for each one, on paper, then sat down and decided what the strongest design would be and figured out what kind of poster I wanted to make. None of the sketches particularly impressed me or reached my expectations. However, as I looked at the suicide and cyberbullying sketches, I realized that I could tie them together into one piece. I reevaluated the two topics and sketched the two ideas into one. At first, my sketch just involved a small laptop with the power cord hanging down and strapped around a human's neck. Not only did it represent that cyberbullying could still kill, but also that the Internet and technology could take over our lives. When I started creating the poster online, I used an online painting software called Sumo Paint. Even with my graphics tablet it was extremely difficult to use. I constantly had to start over. Finally, after consulting with my instructor, he pointed out that my project was a little too simple. He suggested that I change the type of computer from the laptop to an old boxy monitor, and to have not only the monitor, but also a keyboard and a mouse. Then, I realized that not only would it improve the composition of the poster, but it would be easier to create a boxy computer rather than the beveled edges of a laptop. Afterwards, working on it for a while, I drew everything except the body. I wanted to make the body to look pixelated, but one of my colleagues couldn't figure out what that was and suggested I change the position of the body. After doing this, I liked it much better without the pixels. It still looked a little bland, though, and after giving it some thought, I added the colors of the social media apps in different parts of the computer and text message bubbles in the background. I still had a lot of problems with the software I was using, so I finally got it.