If you live in the UK, chances are that you at least had one person smoke right in front of you while walking down a busy road and had to unexpectedly inhale a fair proportion of the smog. On a wide enough road, you may be able to get around the person. But on a narrow passageway?
Although I am pretty sure that most people are aware of what secondhand smoke is, let’s find out if there are evidences on just how harmful it actually is.
Those are the first things that come to mind when we think about secondhand smoking. But are they really all?—No.
Smokers in the streets are usually holding cigarettes at their chest or waist levels, equivalent to the face level of children or people in wheelchairs. It can cause serious facial or eye injuries, including blindness.
Here is an article about a 7-year-old Japanese boy who was injured by a lit cigarette in the street.
Also, many people in various countries including Canada and USA are concerned about the environmental impact of street-smoking, demanding stronger laws to prohibit it.
Given all this information, wouldn’t it be fair to call the street smokers—especially those in the narrow streets or crosswalks that we cannot easily avoid—‘Street Villains’?
I started this project to make people aware of the severity of the issue. I used the provocative, but playful, word “villain” to get the attention and to really make them think twice about what they probably already know.
First, I collected images of as many villains as possible.
<Sketches>
A. Background
The setup had to represent the situation where smokers can cause harm or annoyance to people nearby, and also fit the image of the villain.
B. Layout/Perspective
C. Villains
For consistency of the theme, I drew the villains myself from scratch with their respective iconic colours, rather than drawing them exactly like their movie characters or book illustrations.
D. Dividing posters into 3 parts
I decided on an installation of three different posters (types A, B and C explained below) for each of the themes so that they draw people’s attention and make them curious.
A: explaining the setting with a relatively specific illustration
B: including short article detailing the message the posters convey
C: Conveying the message with visual impact, using the heading and one iconic portion of the illustration from the type A poster.
Street Villains Posters - Joker version, A-B-C
Street Villains Posters - Captain Hook version, A-B-C
