Conceptual photography in graphic design; a review on social responsibility posters

Graphic design and conceptual photography are areas of visual communication with strong semiotic messages, where the idea comes before the form. Conceptual photography can provide a stronger message in graphic design products with its ability to be edited, manipulated and produced multiple messages. Poster designs for social responsibility projects are areas where photography is used extensively. For this reason, in the last part of the research, poster studies for social responsibility projects were examined. Conceptual photography is an important visual communication field used in design in terms of making messages more understandable. Of course, its importance in the designs made for social responsibility projects is even greater. Social responsibility designs have a valuable mission, this mission is to help raise awareness about social problems existing in society and to solve these problems through practices in order to create a more livable world for all living things. The use of superficial, ordinary, poor quality, violent, targeting, false and negative messages in the studies conducted on this subject not only causes errors in the transfer of meaning, but also creates the problem of not being watched and taken for granted. Well-constructed, visually and conceptually strong, innovative photographs that interact with the audience prolong the viewing time of the poster, keep the communication channels open between the person and the image, and encourage thinking about the message. The poster topics examined in the last part of the thesis were selected from among the social responsibility project studies. The reasons for choosing these subjects are that they are closely related to the whole world and social life and are protected by laws. Implementation studies were also created on the basis of these selected topics.