Job Elimination

Scott R. Knauth Huser

College Writing 1

Dr. Taylor Drake

October 1, 2013

Analyzing Visual Media

Advertisements are everywhere, and they invade all of our lives. Companies create advertisements since ads hold great power, they can persuade the reader what to think about a product, or what product a person wants or even what a person should believe in. To understand advertisements fully, the reader must be able to analyze the advertisement by looking at how the ad is presented; the article “Elements of an Effective Layout” by Dorothy Cohen points out that a person can analyze how an ad is presented by looking at balance, proportion, movement, and unity. Also a reader must analyze what the verbal text of an ad is saying, whom the ad is targeting, what appeals are made in the ad, and what the advertiser's goals to understand what they are telling the reader. To illustrate how to do this, the pet food advertisements for Fancy Feast will be examined. The images and text are purposefully arranged to persuade consumers to associate the product with a certain lifestyle. Obviously not all types of advertising appeal to everyone, so the target audience is essential in portraying the image of the product and quality.

In our society, an extremely smart and effective way of selling a product is by having a good ad layout that attracts attention, interest, and provides some control over the manner in which the advertisement is read. (Cohen, 212) By looking at balance, proportion, movement, and unity, a viewer can see how an ad is presented. If a person looking for balance of an ad, you're looking for the point that the "reader's eye designates as the center of the ad,"(Cohen, 212) so in terms of the Fancy Feast advertisement the balance of the ad is the white fluffy cat. The proportion of an advertisement is the size of the images related to each other, therefore in the Fancy Feast ad the proportion would be the size of the cat to the glass bowl to the medium size...