Critical writing A social semiotics poster is a poster that provokes thought in the viewer. The topic of the poster can be any major or minor problem we see in society. The assignment I was given was to have no words on the poster, which made it a little more difficult to ensure the message reached the viewer. There were four objectives for this project. Firstly, it was about exploring the principles of ideation, gestalt and semiotics using images. Second, communicate a point of view. Third, it involved using the concepts of semiotics to edit and rearrange an image to communicate a message. Finally, fourth, experiment with a poster format. We could either draw our poster or create one online on our computers. The final idea for my project took almost the entire two weeks that we worked on the project. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not 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 difficult to watch because it was so emotional. Then I started doing research. I Googled social issues in today's society and wrote down all the ones that seemed interesting to do. I also looked at images to think about. I ended up having at least ten topics I could base my project on. I started getting ideas for all ten in my head and marking off the ones that wouldn't really work for me, until I only had a few topics left to work on. Some of the topics I was leaning toward were: homeless veterans and refugee housing, low pay for an educator, hunger, suicide, and cyberbullying. I sketched out ideas for each of them, on paper, then sat down and worked out what the strongest design would be, and came up with the type of poster I wanted to make. None of the sketches really stood out to me or met my expectations. However, as I watched the suicide and cyberbullying skits, I realized I could connect them into one piece. I re-evaluated both topics and sketched the two ideas into one. At first my sketch simply featured a small laptop with the power cord hanging down and tied around a human's neck. Not only did this mean 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 had to constantly start over. Finally, after consulting with my instructor, he pointed out to me that my design was a little too simple. He suggested that I change the computer type from laptop to an old square monitor, and have not only the monitor, but also a keyboard and mouse. Then I realized that not only would this improve the composition of the poster, but a square computer would be easier to create rather than the smoothed edges of a notebook. Afterwards, working on this for a while, I took everything out except the body. I wanted to create a pixelated body, but one of my peers couldn't tell what it was and suggested I change the position of the body. After doing this, I liked it much better without the pixels. However, it still seemed a bit bland and, after.