It has been a year since I first embarked on the photo project “Am I Number 12?” commemorating World Hepatitis Day which falls on 28 July. Unlike the previous project which was done to a certain extent, on a much larger scale, given the number of personalities and “celebrities” involved, this year will prove to be much quieter and low-profile.
The theme for this year’s visual branding would be that of the three wise monkeys. This denotes the perception of the general public in assuming an indifferent stance toward the little-known and much stigmatized hepatitis disease. One thinks that if one were to see, hear and speak nothing about hepatitis, one will successfully avert oneself from the disease. It’s a sad and horrifying act of sweeping things under the carpet to hopefully eradicate the problem.
However, education and awareness is definitely the way to go when it comes to confronting the reality on this World Hepatitis Day come July. Riding on this continued momentum of rallying support for a much-informed society about the silent killer, I had my first photo shoot at KLPac over more than 2 weeks ago.
We got a few friends to turn up and effortlessly acted the parts of Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru. It was simple, quick and easy!
A couple of days later, the second and final photo session was held at Stamford College. Stamford College is one of the co-host and main sponsors for this year’s World Hepatitis Day. They rounded up a few of their staffs and students to participate in contributing to the visual branding exercise for this year’s Malaysia campaign.
Finally, a selection of the headshots were made and put together in a tiled format, with the missing 12th headshot, replaced with a “It’s closer than you think” tag line.
This composite picture will be the main promotional image for this year’s World Hepatitis Day, Malaysia campaign to be held at One Utama from 27 – 29 July 2012. Keep a close watch at this space or visit www.myhepatitisday.com for more updates.