By 1995, the percentage of U.S. children with elevated blood-lead levels has dropped from 88.2% in the 1970s to 4.4%, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By 2000, Almost all the pollutants that contribute to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards have significantly decreased since 1970:
Case study: Fear: AIDS is a mass murder (Germany)
Humor: Love life, stop AIDS (Switzerland)
Fear and Humor are common to be used in graphic design. The purpose of the public campaign is to make impact, and to be remembered easily by viewers. In this case, I would like to compare the efficiency of fear and humor, and how they are used in the AIDS campaign.
In both aspects, the method is to use metaphor of the images and embrace the complexity rather than presenting straight answers.
AIDS is a mass murder. 2009 (Germany)
The “AIDS is a mass murderer” awareness campaign was designed in Germany by Regenbogen e.V. in conjunction with the advertising agency, “das comitee.”
The creators of the ad campaign chose these men according to their website because “it features the greatest mass murderers in recent history having sex.”
“The campaign is designed to shake people up, to bring the topic of AIDS back to centre stage, and to reverse the trend of unprotected sexual intercourse.”
According to Witte and Allen in 2000, Fear appeals are most effective when they contain both a high-treat AND a high-efficiency component. The aim of the campaign to scare people extremely. It is designed to terrify people. What I've learned at school is that if you want to emphasize something, you should use it to the limit. I think this is a good example. Although I like the metaphor of the images, I also worry that by using historical figures to interpret murderers, the message may be misleading.
Stop Aids is an example of one of the longest running and most carefully evaluated social marketing programs for AIDS prevention in the world. Its initial audience was gay men, but as the epidemic began to expand it reached out to a truly national audience. Its most important difference was to constantly measure not only condom use, but changing attitudes toward the epidemic.
The national Aids prevention campaign has never tried to get its message across with scenarios that transmit fear, threats or horror. The campaign has always sought to draw on scientific facts in order to make a distinction between situations which could potentially lead to infection with HIV and situations which are not associated with a risk. The campaign supports the belief that it is not the task of the state to pass judgement on the sexual practices adopted by individuals, and has avoided mixing public health aspects with moral values.
The tag line in the posters is: "No action without protection." I got my Aha momnet while I saw the tag line. I like how the designer manipulate the hockey and fencing players wearing nothing to symbolize no protection.
I am interested in how efficiency can fear and humor be in the design. I think for my thesis, this is one aspect I want to explore.
Reference:
Ehlers, Dineke. 2007. "The efficiency of fear appeals in South African HIV/AIDS campaign texts." Pretoria, South Africa. University of South Africa.
Mohan, Shivani. 2009. "Humor and design." Chicago. IIT Institute of Design.
I've been thinking about what design's role in preventing air pollution. As we discussed earlier, the goal is to raise awareness. How can design raising awareness? By positive or by negative attitude? By fear or optimism? Which one is working better?
So I think I would like to discuss on the relationship between fear, humor, and graphic design by a campaign for improving air quality.
Jenny Bergström, a designer and researcher in Stockholm, used a flock printing technique to display air pollution over time in an urban environment.
An excerpt from her website:
This is the air we breathe… provides instant feedback on our actions in the city. By using a technique for printing called ‘flock’ a dirt absorbing text or pattern can be printed on a less dirt absorbing surface and create a slow but direct response on pollution. People passing every day by car will be reminded of how they effect the urban environment.
In the city we are used to being approached by information from almost all directions. The commercialized urban environment consists of messages, constantly fighting for our attention, loud and/or with rapidly moving images. This is the air we breathe… uses another method in order to communicate. It demands time from the receiver and it does not deliver a straight answer.
I found it is quite interesting that the drivers can see what was happening. Invisible became visible. Design for awareness like this can have impact on fear. How design can manipulate fear? What rules can be followed by using fear? Is it working better than optimistic attitude?
Mexico's capital, which sits in a dried lakebed 7,350 feet above sea level, faces particular problems from vehicle exhaust. Intense solar radiation at such altitude worsens air pollution, which includes a noxious mix of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone and tiny suspended particulates.
When pollution grew acute in the late 1980s, both the city and federal governments imposed measures, including the removal of lead from gasoline, obligatory use of catalytic converters, and substitution of fuel oil in factories and power plants with natural gas.
The boldest move might have been a 1989 measure that bans most drivers from using their vehicles one day per week. Recent projects have burnished the environmental credentials of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who says the city's climate action program is the first of its kind in Latin America. Ebrard earlier this year placed bikes-for-hire stations in central areas of the city. He has announced that 500 Nissan Leaf electric taxis will be on city roads next year, a step toward getting gas guzzlers off the roads. Electric buses are also in the works.
But some municipal policies are contradictory. City Hall is adding second levels to highways to ease traffic congestion but potentially pulling more cars onto roads, said Sandra Guzman of the Mexican Center for Environmental Law. "There are no incentives for people to get out of their autos," Guzman said. Instead, city planners should spend more on aggressive extension of the rapid-transit Metrobus vehicles, she said.
While skies are clearing, the presence of ozone is still harmful, giving rise to bronchial complaints, eye irritation and fatigue. Last year, ozone exceeded healthy levels on 180 days, only a 2 percent improvement from the previous year.
Raise public awareness and willing to change the situation.
How can design get involved and improve the situation?
Some people may argue the issue is not urgent enough for design to pay attention. But let me remind you that you can choose the food you eat and the clothes you wear. However, you can't choose the air you breathe. The weather became more and more extreme. We will never know what will happen. It's never too early to doing something green. Personally, I think everyone deserve a better life. As designers, we have great abilities and influence. By utilizing our ability to effectively communicate and build interest, we can generate awareness and further the cause to end global warming.
Campaign for cleaner air by changing habits of transportation.
Raise awareness.
Use Eco-Friendly materials, such as green billboard, recycled paper and digital devices.
While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.
The municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.
Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.
As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”
In the past decade, there had been “a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy,” he said. And it is having an effect. After two decades of car ownership, Hans Von Matt, 52, who works in the insurance industry, sold his vehicle and now gets around Zurich by tram or bicycle, using a car-sharing service for trips out of the city. Carless households have increased from 40 to 45 percent in the last decade, and car owners use their vehicles less, city statistics show.
“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it,” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.
Today 91 percent of the delegates to the Swiss Parliament take the tram to work. Still, there is grumbling. “There are all these zones where you can only drive 20 or 30 kilometers per hour [about 12 to 18 miles an hour], which is rather stressful,” Thomas Rickli, a consultant, said as he parked his Jaguar in a lot at the edge of town. “It’s useless.”
Urban planners generally agree that a rise in car commuting is not desirable for cities anywhere.
Mr. Fellmann calculated that a person using a car took up 115 cubic meters (roughly 4,000 cubic feet) of urban space in Zurich while a pedestrian took three. “So it’s not really fair to everyone else if you take the car,” he said.
A modern public transport network and an all-encompassing mobility strategy results in a traffic modal-split of 36% public transport, 30% pedestrian/bikes and 26% cars.
European cities are reaping the rewards of innovative parking policies, including revitalized town centers; big reductions in car use; drops in air pollution and rising quality of urban life, according to Europe’s Parking U-Turn: From Accommodation to Regulation, published today (January 19th) by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
Recently, Hamburg is promoting its green capital image to the European cities. The project is called "Train of Ideas." The train will travel around Europe and campaign for visions for future cities. The exhibition on the train has 6 topics:
1. Green capital Hamburg
2. I-City of people
3. City as living space
4. City and nature
5. Urban responsibility
6. Cities prior to climate change
In Zurich, bus and train travel to be promoted-not car driving.
Nearly 80 percent of all journeys within Zurich’s city limits are made by foot, bike or public transportation. With its mobility strategy the city is promoting the expansion of local public transportation, like Hamburg and other European cities. Bike and footpaths are also being expanded. Driving a car, however, is expensive in the downtown area. Hard-to-come-by parking spots subject to a charge are intended to stimulate the change to buses and trains.
The quality of life in the 2000-Watt Society does not entail any restrictions. On the contrary, security, health, comfort and the development of the individual are all improved, with incomes increasing by around 60 percent over 50 years. On a global level, sustainability will be a necessary condition for peaceful social co-existence.
To achieve this goal by 2050, the city of Zürich is making commitments in the following areas:
Energy efficiency and renewable energies Comprehensive energy services are offered along with consulting for constructioncompanies to pass on the necessary expertise.
Sustainable buildings Almost all new constructions such as housing estates, school buildings and retirement homes, correspond to the Minergie Standard (for low-energy housing).
Mobility for the futureZürich promotes means of transport which make efficient use of urban spaces and energy resources, namely public transport, pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
Awareness Regular events to increase public awareness are held, such as the annual environment days and the Zürich Multimobil action day (where the inner-city is closed to cars).
In June of 2008, There was a rank graded by Mercer Consulting for cities with the best quality in the world. Mercer Consulting established the scale on a point-by-point scoring indicator. This point by point scoring had Zurich 108.0 points while Baghdad merely scored 13.5 points. The cities were all based on with a comparison with New York with an index score of 100 points. This quality of live scale rates 215 cities around the world. The scale is used by different companies to position employees in cities for international assignments.
In 2010, there are several charts about world's cities with poor air quality. The ranks are different based on different criteria. I choose 24/7 Wall St.'s rank because it reviewed several dozen studies on air quality conducted over the past few years, along with data from government websites and private sources. Our review examined data about the following pollutants:
Sulfur dioxide: Produced when fossil fuels are burned and is the primary cause of acid rain. Exposure causes eye irritation, coughing, worsening of asthma and respiratory-tract infections.
Nitrogen dioxide: Produced by generators, power plants and motor vehicles. It has been shown to cause bronchitis and other pulmonary diseases.
Particulates: Refers to a variety of small pollutants, including lead, dust, ammonia, soot and pulverized minerals. They're a leading cause of lung cancer. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mortality in cities with high levels of particulates "exceeds that observed in relatively cleaner cities by 15% to 20%."
With that background, here are 24/7's 10 cities with the worst air quality:
1. Beijing, China
1. New Delhi, India
3. Santiago, Chile
4. Mexico City, Mexico
5. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
6. Cairo, Egypt
7. Chongqing, China
8. Guangzhou, China
9. Hong Kong
10. Kabul, Afghanistan
Zurich Population Density. 4049/km² (10251.3 /sq mi)
Mexico City Population Density, 5960.3/km2 (15437.2/sq mi)
In 2008, Zurich was ranked no.1 with best air quality city and in 2010, it was ranked no.2 in best quality of living by Mercer. I choose Zurich as my role model to see what has been done in transportation policy related to good air quality. While Beijing may be the most air polluted city, but the cause is industrial emission instead of cars. So I choose Mexico City, which has the highest level of ground-level ozone in the world, as my role model to examine what can be done to improve air quality.
