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Ruka Shimohata

Emily Litle

ENG 121.001

18 September 2017

Importance of choosing pictures and its affect

An image that I chose is about recruitment advertisement of the international volunteer.

It advertises countermeasure for AIDS in Ghana. This image was published by the Japan

International Cooperation Agency which is called JICA. This group supports countries which

have health, education, and poverty issues. In this image, we can see smiling children, a peaceful

landscape, and clean uniforms and shoes at background. At the center, we can see a man who

seem to be a nice person, an exclamation mark colored red and blue, and a picture which seem to

be drawn by children. At first glance, they seem to have no particular meaning. However, they

have proper meanings. For the visual text, it says, There is always something we can do using

big white letters, and We can do something that is necessary for this country one by one; data

collection, analysis, and investigation in the exclamation mark. Also, the bottom of the image, it

is written countermeasure for AIDS in Ghana. These words are devised to attract our eyes.

According to the United Nations HIV/AIDS Joint Plan (UNAIDS) report, there are

260,000 HIV-positive people in Ghana, and more than 20,000 people die by AIDS every year.

Although it is urgent to prevent the spread of infection, in Ghana, where the infection rate is low

among African countries, there is little sense of crisis against peoples infection and participation

in the examination is passive. Therefore, JICA hold events combining AIDS prevention

awareness activities such as HIV antibody test, quiz congress on HIV, play show to eliminate

discrimination and prejudice in Ghana.

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I think, the purpose of this advertisement, is to recruit volunteers and to collect

contributions from the general public, because, in order to continue this operation, they need

volunteer and funds. Also, if they recruit people, they will want to recruit motivated people.

This image makes us want to participate in volunteers. Such advertisements usually use

photos of poor children, but it is used the photos of children with smile for this advertisement.

This mean is that they want to show us how wonderful their operations are. As they expected, we

feel that this organization is doing very good activity when we see this advertisement. There are

4 points that I wrote in the first paragraph to feel us like this. First is smiling children. When we

see childrens smile, we feel positive effective. Second, a peaceful landscape, a picture which the

man has in his hand, clean uniforms and shoes. We can know that the standard of living and

education level of this country became better than other African countries. Third is the man. He

looks like a staff of JICA and he looks so kind. When we think that we work in here as a member

of JICA, this picture will give us confidence. Fourth is exclamation mark. This is colored red and

blue, and there are some visual texts in this. It is written important message, so it was designed to

attract peoples eyes. Overall, I got a feeling of cleanliness and a healthy impression from this

image.

In my opinion, this advertisement is well done. It shows us not poor children but good

point obtained by doing this volunteer. It is innovative. By using these photos, I can see this

advertisement pleasantly and feel positively. In addition, there are texts which are easy to read.

They are used simple color and font and impressive sentences. Also, the reason that this image

was used positive picture, is to recruit volunteers. If our place of work is dark and sad, almost of

people will not want to go. However, if our place of work looks bright and safety, we will want
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to work in there. A disappointing point for me is the font. If I make this advertisement, I would

have used a framed letter, because I think it will be better to emphasize the sentences.

In conclusion, this image shows us the interesting of volunteers and that there is always

something we can do for people. We saw a lot of recruitment advertisement in our life. However,

there are a lot of images that are used scary or cruel pictures. They sometimes affect us but when

children see those image, they will afraid. I think using good image and tell message to people is

good for children and also we can see the picture with a good feeling.

https://www.jica.go.jp/volunteer/index.html