Visual Persuasion Campaign: "One Less"
A MOVEMENT TO BRING AWARENESS TO
THE HUMAN OVERPOPULATION PROBLEM
THE HUMAN OVERPOPULATION PROBLEM
All graphic design seniors at my college are given the class "Visual Persuasion," where we must choose a cause and then develop persuasive messages that aim to gather attention and followers to the cause. One of the very first topics I considered was overpopulation of humans on a planet wide scale, and the dire effects that it has on the world. I was lucky in that the professors liked my idea, many others had to change and redo their concepts several times, tossing weeks of development out the window.
I focused on the fact that every adversity humanity undergoes these days can be tied back to the fact that their are simply too many of us on this small world, and that if we were to bring awareness to the repercussions of having large families, and how if everybody had "one less" child, namely if families had only one child, that by the time our generation expired, we would halve the global population more or less, which would work towards fixing the problems on Earth.
Less people means less fuel consumption, less resources being burned through such as lithium which we are tearing the planet apart looking for to make more and more hybrid cars and iphones, less impact on delicate ecosystems, less power that needs to be generated causing pollution and global warming, less mouths to feed, etc etc. Its a easy idea to get, its just convincing literally everyone on the planet to follow along with it that is the hard part.
Its a touchy subject to a lot of people, I tried to approach it in the format of choice, rather than enforcement. Although China was arguably effective in quelling its population to a degree with government enforced birth control, it was a very stressful solution on the populace. I looked for a more friendly method of persuading the audience that having a lot of children was not desirable, and that they were being saints by having only one kid and "doing their part to save the world."
I focused on the fact that every adversity humanity undergoes these days can be tied back to the fact that their are simply too many of us on this small world, and that if we were to bring awareness to the repercussions of having large families, and how if everybody had "one less" child, namely if families had only one child, that by the time our generation expired, we would halve the global population more or less, which would work towards fixing the problems on Earth.
Less people means less fuel consumption, less resources being burned through such as lithium which we are tearing the planet apart looking for to make more and more hybrid cars and iphones, less impact on delicate ecosystems, less power that needs to be generated causing pollution and global warming, less mouths to feed, etc etc. Its a easy idea to get, its just convincing literally everyone on the planet to follow along with it that is the hard part.
Its a touchy subject to a lot of people, I tried to approach it in the format of choice, rather than enforcement. Although China was arguably effective in quelling its population to a degree with government enforced birth control, it was a very stressful solution on the populace. I looked for a more friendly method of persuading the audience that having a lot of children was not desirable, and that they were being saints by having only one kid and "doing their part to save the world."
Manifesto
The global human population has hit a staggering size that may have reached a point that is past what the Earth is able to sustain. Global warming, animal extinction, power and fuel concerns, deforestation, clean water, loss of natural landscapes, food production, waste management, all the trials that face humanity come back to one single common denominator; that there are simply too many humans on the planet.
This campaign will be geared towards teens and young adults that will promote not only safe sex, but also the concept of having only a single child with the aim that if “everyone” only had one child the population would halve once our generation has expired.
Persuasive factors will include things that evoke visceral emotions and levels of comfort, such as how most people hate crowded subways and airports and how that will only get worse, or how we are coming close to running out of cell phone bandwidth; that there are literally so many people with phones, we are running out of physical room in the radio spectrum, and telecom companies are pushing to look at dangerous microwave level communications. No matter what topic you come up with that effects humans, chances are it can be solved with a reduction in population, which is what this campaign aims to bring awareness to.
This campaign will be geared towards teens and young adults that will promote not only safe sex, but also the concept of having only a single child with the aim that if “everyone” only had one child the population would halve once our generation has expired.
Persuasive factors will include things that evoke visceral emotions and levels of comfort, such as how most people hate crowded subways and airports and how that will only get worse, or how we are coming close to running out of cell phone bandwidth; that there are literally so many people with phones, we are running out of physical room in the radio spectrum, and telecom companies are pushing to look at dangerous microwave level communications. No matter what topic you come up with that effects humans, chances are it can be solved with a reduction in population, which is what this campaign aims to bring awareness to.
Identity
-1ess is an amalgation of negative one and less, and serves as the identity because it is the central idea of the movement; that if families have “one less” child than the norm, that we could halve the population in a generation’s time. The core concept is about having less people as a means to fix every problem out there, and so the that is why it stuck as the name.
Posters
Website
Guerrilla Advertising
I developed some guerrilla advertising strategies for the -1ess movement, that involved putting posters about the cause in places where human overpopulation is most felt and people are generally anxious. Situations such as crowded airports, bus stations, and subway trains were all targets where the message would hopefully carry the biggest impact and therefore have the greatest likelihood of being researched by the audience who would then hopefully join the movement.
Merchandise
I decided one of the effective means of bringing awareness to this cause was by creating merchandise for people to wear to spread it around. Included were t-shirts, buttons, and condom packaging. The condom protection would also be able to be donated as charity to parts of the world that lack basic supplies such as this.
