In this lesson, students investigate how tobacco companies frame their products in different ways for different audiences.
Resources for Teachers
In this lesson, students learn tobacco and nicotine advertising through the “rules of notice” of visual media. Students move from identifying factual design elements to interpreting their emotional impact and evaluating the broader societal implications of these constructions. Students then create an original counter-advertisement or parody ad that challenges industry narratives and unmasks manipulation.
In this lesson, students learn how film and related media use camera angles, distance and movement to tell a story. Students review various film techniques that are used to create visual meaning and then apply them by creating a six-shot storyboard that tells a complete story.
The comics industry is currently experiencing a period of immense transformation and expansion, marked by surging sales, rapid digital disruption and a dramatic diversification of readership and content. Far from the niche market it was decades ago, today's industry is a global one where new technologies and distribution methods are reshaping how stories are created, circulated and consumed.
Unlike film or photography, which "intrinsically claim to be accurate documents," comics invite the reader to experience “the visual aspect of a story as it’s transformed through the cartoonist’s perception.” With rare occasions, such as photo-comics, a comic is a "particular, personal version of its artist’s vision – not what the artist’s eye sees, but the way the artist’s mind interprets sight."
Comics invite you to see the visual aspect of a story through the specific viewpoint of the artist’s mind. Perhaps because of this active participation, youth who read comics are almost twice as likely to say they enjoy reading print books.
Visual media, encompassing art, photography and film, communicate meaning to an audience by strategically employing "rules of notice" – deliberate techniques used by creators to guide a viewer's attention and influence their interpretation of an image or narrative.