An Introduction

Source: mrhensler.com

Public Service Announcements are a crucial means of informing and making people aware of topics and situations of great importance. They have to be quick, direct and immediately grab the audience's attention, all of this is done by using language in specific ways to achieve those results.

Whenever there is a matter of urgency or great importance in which people are unaware of a corporation or the government, distributes messages in different medias which inform the people. These messages come on the radio, television and print. They are known as Public Service Announcements, and are broadcasted without charge by the different channels and have the objective of raising awareness, and informing, the population about a certain health or safety hazard. This type of message has no target audience, in fact its main objective is to reach as many people as it possibly can, hence the different types of media used to distribute them. Focusing in the media of print PSAs have to use language in a certain way to be effective, this includes short sentences, commonly used or informal language and the design of the poster and font has to be simple as well as distinguishable in a way that will attract the attention of people walking by it. I will compare three different Public Service Announcement posters which are from two different centuries. Two are from the period of the Second World War and were used by the British government to calm and reassure the British people during a period of fear and violence. The other is a poster for the Lung Cancer Alliance which was recently release in New York City, it uses some of the techniques previously mentioned to attract and inform people.

This analysis will show how the two different posters use the same technique to achieve similar results from the audience, as well as how the British poster even though was used quite a long time ago has recently regained its fame and popularity.

Anti-Smoking PSA
Source: coloribus.com

Anti Drug PSA Poster
Source:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXStMNE0wqfMpBErUx2OuV2PGz0Sw5suJQFU8hHwOdAhKWcPw270pPP1XF5BUCTeyneY_FLOZSyzloLR1uWu7ffVBvjus1C1myPDNzvRxmiX3Ja1Hwlzzvhn83Z0cf3QXKBoThHsRxazg/s400/psa.jpg