Project 3 - Explanation
Medical students are the future of our society’s healthcare system. The knowledge that they learn within medical school is designed to prepare them for their future experiences in diagnosing and treating patients. As a result, the message of my campaign was to communicate how much these students need to learn in a short time, and the characteristics of future doctors towards current medical students at Florida State University. This campaign was designed around the idea that physical genres are better suited to directly engage my audience.
I decided to make a poster that features a study group for the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). This examination is a standardized test designed to assess a medical students aptitude for what they have learned in their studies. All medical students who want to earn their M.D. must pass this examination in two separate seatings.
To create this poster I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The poster is effective because it is a lasting advertisement for the study group that can be hung in the same place for a long time period. As a result, I decided to display this poster inside of the Florida State University College of Medicine. This building houses all the classes that medical students are required to take during the four year duration. Therefore, a poster that is hung inside of the building will catch the eye of many medical students and avoid people who wouldn’t benefit from the study group. In addition, posters can be easily duplicated at a low cost to reach more medical students and get more people interested in the study group. Exposure is essential to creating an effective message to an audience, and posters are cheap and reach a large number of people. However, posters don’t directly engage people because nobody is forced to stop and examine what the poster has to say. To counteract this problem, I created a poster that grabs a person’s attention with its vibrant coloration and pictures.
I also created a comic addresses the same message in a very different approach. Comics are typically satirical, but they do address issues that are actually a problem. For instance, the comic I created depicts first year medical students being tested on their ability to label a cadavers skeletal system. The student picks up a man’s ribcage asking if this is his collarbone, and his partner affirms that it is indeed the collarbone when it is clearly not. The cadaver then rises up like a live person and tells the students, “Those are my ribs!” This satirical interaction depicts how the attitude of “thinking you know everything” is no longer acceptable in medical school. Even trained medical professionals who have decades of experience can’t possibly know everything there is to know about the human body. As a result, medical students must be dedicated to discovering as much as they can about the body to be the best physicians possible in the future. To distribute this comic, I decided to circulate it on Facebook including on the class pages for the medical schools. As I discovered in my interview, these class pages are used to answer any questions students have regarding the curriculum or assignments. Therefore, many medical students are visiting this page and it gets a lot of web traffic.
Lastly, the t-shirt that I designed was specifically made to address the characteristics that a future physician should possess and strive to have. The shirt displays a stethoscope on the front with the FSU logo on the diaphragm. This identifies that it pertains to Florida State University’s College of Medicine. On the back of the shirt it has an acrostic poem for the words “med student.” The qualities that are spelled out on the back describe what it takes to be a future physician and successfully navigate through medical school. These qualities are displayed in bold lettering to make sure the message of the shirt is received. I designed this shirt in Adobe Illustrator. I used an image of a blank white t-shirt as the base to create this garnet FSU med student shirt. This shirt would reach the broadest audience by wearing it around campus. Medical students are frequently roaming campus utilizing the libraries and other resources on campus. The t-shirt is effective because one person wearing it makes it a walking billboard.