Those who regularly visit the campus canteens may find something visually attractive and stunning in the canteen environment recently. The walls, notice boards, and staircase are plastered with eye-catching posters that call upon the campus community to reflect on the use of plastics. These posters are the work of some School of Design students who attempt to address the adverse impacts of plastics through an out-of-the-box design.
These design students are determined to challenge themselves with a mission – to involve the campus community to kick plastics. They set a dramatic scaling up of those commonly-seen plastics to excite viewers to get a quick grasp on their forms. They use a color palette that sharply contrasts and creates a playful design. All these design decisions combine to reinforce a message across the entire series of posters that people should ‘run away’ from plastics.
The posters adopt an innovative and unconventional design. They are powerful and effective in motivating the campus community to go plastic-free, which is considered trendy, fashionable, and doable. The posters are now a topic of discussion among staff and students who are in turn encouraged to take the University’s Plastic Free Friday pledge and start going plastic-free on Fridays or a day in a week. Having these posters in canteens reveals that sustainability education can be fun, engaging and empowering for everyone.
In addition to lectures, workshops, and outdoor trips, the University is also taking in creative and stunning publicity tools to extend sustainability education in common and public spaces. These posters deliver straightforward messages on fighting plastics. They evoke emotion and make people more likely to engage in a self-reflection of their dependence on plastics. These attention-grabbing posters invite everyone on campus to make small steps in his or her daily habits and take responsibility for actions for a sustainable future.
