Print ads comparison

In our daily lives, we can always encounter different kinds of advertisements including printed or non-printed ones. Advertising becoming part of people lives and it’s getting more and more important to us.

What is advertisement? “In pursuing a mission to make manifest the most deeply felt needs of the broadest number of people, and thereby attempt to hold them in thrall, advertisements take on the status of fascinating cultural documents.” (Advertising and popular culture, 1996, p.167). Advertising is a kind of communication channel. Sometimes, different people can get different messages from the advertisements, with one’s stance, own experiences or other cultural differences. This time, I’d like to compare the 2 print advertisements that I chose: Dr. Dominic and Lacoste.

In the advertisement of Dr. Dominic, it shows a new product of a famous skin care brand. In order to emphasis the product’s characteristic, which is with high moisture, the product in the ad. is coming with some special effect with water, giving a feeling for readers that after using the product, the face will become moisturized. Below the picture, there are text that introducing the features of the product. The reading path for this ad. will first go to the product itself, then move downward to highlighted feature with a bigger font size, then at last the details information at the bottom. On the other hand, it’s obvious that the layout of this ad. is polarized “top and bottom” as mentioned by Kress (1988, p.193). So, the product is what described as Ideal and the text below as Real.

Regarding the advertisement of Lacoste, this is a promotion ad. for its brand new shoes collection. Instead of having ad text, this ad is dominated by the images of 2 pairs of lady legs. There is no other text in the ad. except the shop name with logo on the top right corner and the collection name at the bottom. Without the text describing what products they are selling, what are the characteristics of the products, this ad. can still carryout the brand image of with non-verbal communication and sending the message to their target audience. This gives readers more rooms for imagination. The image and the way to express the photo are important element on getting people involved. There is no such thing as a correct or incorrect interpretation of an ad. (Fowles, 1996). The sensitivity of people, or we can simply say the emption of people will be affected on how the advertisers present their services or products.

And thus, I think both advertisements are successful in arousing people’s attention to their products.

REFERENCES

Fowles, Jill, 1996, “Deciphering advertisements”, Advertising and popular culture, London: Sage, p.167-183

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, “Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout”, in Bell, Allen & Garrett, Peter (eds.) 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, Chapter 7, p.186-219

Triptych

A Triptych which is divided into three sections, or three panels which are hinged together and folded. This was a common form for an altarpiece during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The outer parts of such triptychs were typically hinged to the central one so that they could be closed over it, and in this case reverse sides were often painted. (Michael Delahunt. 1996).


I have an example for Triptych which is the leaflet of Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon 2008. It is printed with double-sided. When we open the leaflet, all information is clearly shown and well organized. With the Triptych design, the leaflet is divided into 3 parts. in this way, the content is seems to be more organized and separated.


outside pages


inside pages

Special meanings of Corporate Logos

I do always think that design is a very interesting topic to look at. Today, I just discover even a simple logo design, the meaning behind would be very impressive.

Each corporation or company has a unique identity. This is known as Brand Identity. The successful of logo design will help a lot for increasing the reputation and popularity of the corporations. Let look at the 2 examples: FedEx and amazon.com.

Do you see any arrows on FedEx's logo? I'm talking about the ‘arrow’ that you can see between the E and the x in this logo. This arrow points to a way that meaning with FedEx, your parcel can be delivered to anywhere you want. It also showing the speed and precision, which are part of the positioning of the company.

amazon.com is an online shopping site. The yellow arrow pointing form “A” to “Z” means that amazon.com is having all types of goods, you can find everyting at amazon.com. What's more? Can't you see a smiling face looking at you? Yes, a smiling face. The yellow arrow also acts as a smile that brought to the customer's face. Amazing, right?

The "F" Shape Format

After having the work shop of IPD, I fully start recognizing and knowing the theories of "Readability" from the professor.

In a study, it shows how people will read through a web page. That is called the “F-shape” pattern (Nielsen, 2006). The shape of structure is normally like a letter "F". Firstly, most of readers read in horizontal tendency across the top part of article. Secondly, the readers jump and move down the page and read across in a second horizontal tendency. thirdly, the readers scan or read the content on left side in a vertical tendecny.

By my personal experience, I quickly scan the headline of an article firstly. Capturing pictures is my second step of my reading. If the headline and pictures are totally insterested, I would like to keep reading until the end.

Referemce:

Nielsen, J 2006, 'F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content', Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, April 17, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html>, viewed 15 July 2008

Is this an successful design?

Today, I just pass by and get this election advertisement of one of the candidates of 2008 Legilative Council Elction of HKSAR.

Front

Back

From this election advetisement, or i should say it is a flyer, we can see that the design is quite different fromt some tradtional one. As more and more young eletors are concerning about their society, candidates now will need to pay more attention to this group of young people.

Let's look at the front of this flyer. The image is simple and outstanding. The candidiate picture is being shown at the middle of the flyer. On the other hand, the slogan is very eye-catching at the bottom. The color contrast of red and white can get people attention and highlighting the important message - the candidate name on the right and the fire (the energy) that the candidate shows.

At the back, it uses the main color - red as the background color with reverse white text. The information is clearly presented with headings and subheadings. According to Walsh (2006), "An important aspect of reading is prediction and both these headings invite the reader to predict, guess, imagine or question aspects".

Thus, I think this flyer is quite successful on the design and catching people's attention to read through it.

Welcome to my blogging world!

This is my first post with my blog for IPD.
Welcome all and I will be updating it soon.