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Photograph cite: http://kellyashcraft.com/#prettyPhoto [PSA: Smoking Is Suicide] =Death by Smoking = Although it becomes common sense that smoking causes dramatic negativity on the human body, people still cannot stop smoking because of nicotine's addictive properties. Furthermore, smoking largely affects not only the smoker but also the people surrounding a smoker, a number of anti-smoking movements have risen to protect human health. One of the many methods these movements utilize is to run advertisement campaigns. Because advertisements heavily influence public opinion, several photographers chose to include logos, pathos, and ethos in their advertisement to increase persuasiveness. Pathos appeals to the emotion of the audience, ethos provides credibility of the work, and logos gives factual information to enhance reliability. Thus, this anti-smoking portrays a boy as a victim of smoking with a gun shaped smoke that metaphorically describes death in order to effectively criticize negative result of smoking.

Kelly Ashcraft uses the elements of the anti-smoking advertisement to influence the smoking issue through portraying a boy as a victim of smoking. The rectangular-framed advertisement is a black and white image with an obscured, black background. On the left side of the picture, the shadow covers half of a boy’s face, and he has depressed facial expression. Furthermore, the boy is holding a cigarette and smoke is coming out of his mouth. Upon more lengthy observation, you realize that the smoke forms a gun which is pointed at the boy who is smoking. On the right bottom side of the image, there is bold text that says, “Kill a cigarette and save a life, yours.” First, in overall structure, Kelly Ashcraft designed a black-and-white photograph in order to stress the negative influence of smoking. Since “black-and-white gives the contrasting impression that can help the audience to focus on the composition,” Kelly Ashcraft successfully grabs a reader’s attention and focuses it on the advertisement’s central feature of smoking (Geffin, “why”). Second, Kelly Ashcraft uses a gun-shaped smoke cloud in order to stress the negative influence of smoking. The gun-shaped smoke cloud is pointing at the boy's head, and this represents that a single cigarette kills one’s life. Therefore, Kelly Ashcraft tries to pick out the facts that smoking ultimately leads one to a negative result.

Kelly Ashcraft uses her anti-smoking project to influence the smoking issue through portraying a boy as a victim of smoking. First, Kelly Ashcraft starts a project called “Smoking Is Suicide” to make an effective anti-smoking advertisement. On her personal site, she introduced two other anti-smoking advertisements that also show the dooming impacts of smoking on the human body. Second, Kelly Ashcraft joins ASH collaboration which promotes anti-smoking theme to make an effective anti-smoking advertisement. ASH or Action on Smoking and Health, is a group organized “to share images on themes of smoking, tobacco, and their effects.” Furthermore, this group promotes “work of public health that not just against smokers, only against the harm caused by tobacco.” Hence, her “Smoking Is Suicide” project and ASH collaboration ultimately enhance the credibility of her work of anti-smoking advertisement.

Kelly Ashcraft uses emotional appeal to influence the smoking issue through portraying a boy as a victim of smoking. First, Kelly Ashcraft utilizes a teenage boy to rise the feeling of guilt to stress the negative influence of smoking. Usually, a teenager gives the perception for protection. Hence, by showing a boy with gun-shaped smoke, Kelly Ashcraft effectively appeals to emotion of audience to inform danger of smoking. Second, Kelly Ashcraft utilizes a teenage boy’s facial expression to enhance the negative impact of smoking. A cigarette is made in order to give pleasure; however, in this advertisement, the boy has depressed facial expression that makes the audience to think that smoking has significant damage on the body. Hence, Kelly Ashcraft effectively criticizes negativity of smoking on the body through emotional appeal.

Micah Rush uses the caption to emphasize the danger of smoking to influence the smoking issue. In this anti-smoking advertisement, Kelly Ashcraft mainly takes photos, and Micah Rush chooses a concept and writes a caption. Also, a simple advertisement like this anti-smoking advertisement, there is no mentioning of logos for specific statistics. Micah Rush use “kill a cigarette and save life yours” phrase to emphasize the practical danger of smoking. According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking causes nearly 480,000 death annually.” Thus, Micah Rush gives some aspects of the danger of smoking.

Smoking becomes one of the most crucial issues for a number of years. Its dramatic damage on not only on individual health but also the environment. Hence, through this anti-smoking advertisement, Kelly Ashcraft portrays a boy who seems to be depressed as a victim of smoking. Moreover, with her practical usage of black-and-white color, ethos, pathos, and logos, she accomplishes her main purpose of her advertisement: warning danger of smoking. As a result, people should have to hold own responsibility to protect ourselves and respect those who are not smoking; however, in current status, we fail to do so perfectly. Moreover, the danger of smoking reaches not only to smoker oneself but also to secondhand smoking. Therefore, it is time for action, preventing not only smoking but also secondhand smoking by intensifying smoking regulation law and advertising danger of smoking. Like Kelly Ashcraft’s motivated anti-smoking advertisement, people must act to protect own health.

Citation
“ASH Collaboration (Plz Read Description).” Flickr, Yahoo!, 24 Jan. 2017, www.flickr.com/groups/ashcollab/. Ashcraft, Kelly. “Graphic Design.” Kelly Ashcraft, kellyashcraft.com/#prettyPhoto[3425-Smoking Is Suicide]/0/.

 Creative Professionals RSS, Fstoppers, 2 Dec. 2014, fstoppers.com. Geffin, David. “Why It's Still Important to Shoot In Black And White | Fstoppers.” Fstoppers Photography News and Community for “Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 Dec. 2016, www.cdc.gov/tobacco.