Proposal 2

In last proposal, it already identified the causes to a social issue about smartphone addiction and discussed parents play a major role in leading their children learn how to use smartphone responsibly. Thinking this problem deeper, this is a top-off trend that start from adults and pass to teenagers, and children can hardly distinguish right from wrong if their parents dose not set a good example for them, which means put the crucial focus back to adults smartphone addict curing then encourage them guiding their children avoid addiction more initiative, might works better than only pay attention on teenager early high-tech education.

The problem is, for smartphone addiction, it will be more difficult and delicate to ask adults to change their addiction actively. Although adults are more conmmunicable than children, they are also obstinate with their own opinion, who spend more time with smartphone everyday and cannot find another pastime as easy as children unless they want to play seesaw or slide in the playground. More and more creative products are made and sold for help people to leave away from smartphone, but the number of smartphone addict patients still growing rapidly.

Now, there are more and more designers capitalize on their creative opportunities to give full play to their amazing design works which are made for reduce the negative influence of smartphone addiction and encourage people spend less amount of time on the smartphone. In recent years, most of design works for smartphone addiction always become “nonobjective”. It does not means smartphone-addiction-curing products cannot be functioned but only due to the smartphone addiction is an illness that is classed to psychopathology, which can hardly be cured by external auxiliaries. In another word, people who literally in smartphone addiction will hardly be cured unless they want to change themselves. Graphical design works such as propaganda posters and comics provide a better channel for help people who addict in smartphone to notice negative influences of smartphone overusing by a tender way, which also give a better view of negative aspects of smartphone.

However, smartphone is still a useful high-technology product which helps people a lot with inconvenient problems solving in work and daily life. Similar to Internet addiction, people who addict in smartphone should not be prohibited to use it but better be taught to notice the real life is more important (K. S. Young, 1998). In my researching, there has a large amount of design works overstate negative aspects of smartphone using and transmit an information about “ethical forcing”. Although these design works always provide people a visual or spiritual shock and leave a strong impression, most of people will tend to resist the opinion be delivered from those pictures. It seems like, for some people, they can deeply hard to admit their own mistakes or heat to be hit home. It is similar to addiction curing, a soft positive energy passing always works better than forcing or sarcastic sneering.

So I plan to design a poster with only one eye-catching future-tech style designed image which be related to smartphone, and one sentence slogan which will not oversimplify shows “do not overuse your smartphone” or “use your smartphone responsibly for your family/friends/lover”, but use subtle language to placate people thinking patiently before they are allergic with this topic and feel need to resist. However, this poster‘s essence still points on curing smartphone addiction, so it will use cold color and white background to express pale and bland feelings. The keynote of this poster is indirect but meaningful. It does not mean I want to make it complex, it is still a concise eye-catching poster, will not be narrow, just provide a euphemistic and gentle understatement.

[Young, Kimberly S., Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction--and a Winning Strategy for Recovery, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998]

https://youtu.be/vOSYmLER664

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