Contactless Guidance: An Analysis of the Visual Symbols on Covid-19 Posters

Abstract

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in the end of 2019, governments around the world have made efforts to disseminate public health information through various channels to deal with the growing pandemic and promote people's health. From the perspective of health communication, this study examines Covid-19 posters in combination with design and semiotics theories. Five posters from UK, US, Thailand, Canada, and Rwanda were selected and analysed from two aspects—the narrative structure and semiotic representation. The initial findings reveal that there are many well-designed Covid-19 public health posters, which have reasonable graphic proportions and appropriate visual symbols to accurately convey the meaning to be expressed.