Dr. Whalen
ENGL 1201
Visual Analysis
18 March 2013
An accessories advertisement.
My visual image is from the Neiman Marcus 2013 collection brochure. This image advertises the NM Exclusive accessories, and it completely attracted me at the first time I saw it. This advertisement is just a simply image with simply products since they are just frame, ring box and compact, but it really succeed in creating a fresh and youthful feeling to its reader with its subtle and meaningful layout. This ad works well in combining every factor to be a perfect advertisement because it “attract[s] attention and interest and should provide some control over the manner in which the advertisement is read” (Cohen 1). Hence, the advertiser has to focus on every factor to make up the harmony of the image, those factors must be balance, unity, movement, emphasis…Let go through one by one factor and figure out how those things really make up a perfect ad. This picture is constructed in informal balance while from the left and the right of the picture has the same products. There are a frame, a ring box and a compact with its random arrangement on purpose. If we assume that all the products are placed over formal balance in this ad, the picture can be more rigid and dry as all the two things are placed equal through the entire horizontal and vertical spindle. Hence, the informal balance is a perfect way to create an image that “presents a fresh, untraditional approach… creates excitement, a sense of originality, forcefulness, and, to some extent, the element of surprise” (Cohen 2). Moreover, informal balance is a perfect basic for creating the living movement of this ad as there’s no binding in placing every single material. This advertisement has a sharply unity about a cosmetic ad although it contents so many materials. The shadows of the entire products lie in the white space really create the depth of the picture, and so do they create the liveliness of the picture. In addition, it’s easy to figure out the reflections of the picture in the frame appear in other products: the outfit of the kid reflection is in the cover of the ring box and his face reflection is in the upper side of the compact. These things strongly make the connection between those NM products and by the way creating a strongly connection to the readers. However, these products differ by the different colors and place in different positions. As Dorothy Cohen mentioned, proportion is a factor that helps the image looks more ordinal and all the unequal things is the most important factor to create the living of the ad. The green frame with the color is cooler color than the pink one is placed with a nearer position to the viewers, and both the green ring box and compact are placed in that way, too. To highlight all the NM products, the pictures in the frame are all black-white pictures, but they don’t bring a blue feeling. In another hand, the pictures are all about kids, with the joy in their face building up a confident feeling to the viewers. The featuring between the motion and Z- pattern of this picture impresses me most. “The Z pattern builds on the idea that the eye travels from one corner of a rectangular image to the next, one after the other,