Students of the Visual Communication Design Department of our university contributed to tobacco addiction awareness with the poster design they prepared for the design competition themed “Tobacco-Free Life International Poster Competition”. Our students participated in the competition with a homework printout of the Illustration and Design and Humor courses under the guidance of Assoc.Prof.Dr. Doğan ARSLAN, and they qualified to be among the top 100 posters with 10 poster designs.
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Doğan ARSLAN, who prepared the works of his students for the competition, tried to reinforce the basic elements of design by giving them the assignments, and paid attention to the fact that these assignments were also related to topics that included social problems in the world we live in. In this way, the students learned the seriousness of preparing for an international competition and the importance of awareness that they will raise for public health, in addition to preparing an assignment. In the competition, in which a total of 586 participants from 33 countries competed with 1609 works, the works of the second- and third-year visual communication design students were selected among the top 100 works.
In 1999, the World Health Organization (WHO) member countries prepared the draft of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to reduce the prevalence of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke, and to protect current and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental, and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. This framework agreement emphasizes raising public awareness about reducing tobacco use and increasing studies on this issue. The contribution of our students to raising social awareness in order to prevent addictions and guide young people toward a healthy lifestyle with the posters they designed at the “Tobacco Free Life International Poster Competition” has been an important effort to reduce tobacco use, as pointed out by the WHO. While our university students made an important contribution to raising awareness about the harms of tobacco use with their success, they highlighted an important problem for human health with their poster designs.
