The Brazilian government, through its Health Ministry, adopted a strong policy against smoking since the 90`s by establishing a series of educative programs and important legislative measures that, not only determines specific places for selling and smoking of cigarettes, but also regulates the issues related to the its publicity, mainly those related to the information imprinted on cigarette boxes. Based on the Signs theory conceived by Charles Sanders Pierce, this research proposes an analysis of the photographic images used by the government campaigns on cigarette boxes and an investigation of the many possibilities of their interpretation. Moreover, according to Underlying Discourse Unveiling Method (UDUM), this research investigates, through a direct contact with some cigarettes smokers, if these images are successful in their communicative purposes. Finally, this work intends to offer the designers some relevant contribution for the use of photographic images, following a coherent and lucid pattern, proper to the communicative objectives of projects.