1.The choice and organisation of the font and style of illustration
2.The purpose and meaning of the image
3.The target/potential audience of the image
4.The social and historical contexts relevant to the production of the image
In this essay
I am going to compare two historic posters on the basis of four different aspects/questions
about the images. The first image is an a poster advertising for the Uncle Sam
Range Cooker on the centennial anniversary of America becoming independent and
the second image is a piece of war propaganda released in the midst of the
first world war.
Firstly I
will discuss the two images on a basis of the choice and organisation of font
and style of illustration. It is immediately apparent that the font in the
advertising material for the Uncle Sam Range was chosen for a certain purpose. I
believe that capitalised slab style font in the image shows a few things.
Firstly in relation to the capitalisation this tells me that even though the
sentence isn’t a question it alludes to a sense of orders/commandments rather
than it being suggestive, saying you will buy this range. Another this of which
I take from the type is the actual font used. Firstly the font used in my eyes
has almost a militarian sense to it but also is massively reminiscent of the
fonts used in western style films alluding to the history of America. On the
other hand the font used in the WW1 propaganda is used in a persuasive way like
the first poster but not in a way of a commandment but in the way of it is
almost used as a form of blackmail. The font in the WW1 poster conveys a more
innocent and gentle sense that the block capitals in the Uncle Sam Range poster
don’t convey. The script font used portrays a sense of innocence to it as if
the little girl is asking the question. The capitalisation of you makes the
reader thinking about the man in the poster to the reader feeling directly
impacted by the poster as if it is about them.
In the
Uncle Sam Range poster it is trying to convey an overall sense of patriotism to
America and also masculinity. The poster includes various signs that allude to
this notion of patriotism. One of the most apparent references is the overall
colour scheme; the colour scheme of the image is bombarded with the colour red
white and blue on obvious reference to the American flag. The second thing that
is a reference is the clock in the background; if you look closely at the clock
it has 1786 and 1886 on it. This is a reference to the centennial anniversary
of America gaining independence. The final aspect is a combination of two
things the first of these is the fact that the people sat around the table have
words written on their chest, these words say Dixie, West and New England.
These three words relate to the three areas in America at that point west is in
relation to the west coast of America. Dixie refers to all the southern states
of American and New England referring to the northeast corner of the country.
This is referring to the fact that this cooker that is being sold in the advert
is a cooker that everybody should have. This coupled with the fact that the
image shows a very upper-class picture of a dinner party of which displays the
notion of the American dream comes together to be a great persuasion technique to
buy the cooker. On the other hand the WW1 poster has also been designed to
persuade but for a different reason. This poster is using a black mail approach
to convince men do go to war. It can also be looked at in a way of patriotism
too. The first reference coming from the child playing with the toys this
firstly displays that war is a playful thing, an easy thing and a thing the man
should be doing the toys he is playing with are in the style of the beefeaters
of which are a patriotic symbol of England. The poster is designed in a way
that its intentions are to make the men that haven’t gone to war feel ashamed
of themselves for not going. This picture was designed with another patriotic
reference again from the royal symbol of which features on the pound coin on
the curtains and on the chair. The advert was released in 1915 and the poster
pictures a man from a higher class structure such as the middle class this
couples together to give over its main symbolism that its relates to the fact
that it was later on in the war when the lower class had already been called to
war and they needed to persuade the middle class to go to war as a type of
reinforcement. Both images have an overwhelming sense of pride to them.
Finally
they both are for as very similar audience. They are both aimed at the middle
class of the societies we can come to this conclusion because in the American
picture it easily displays the upper-class way of life and the people who were
buying this cooker has to have money to be able to buy it and the WW1 poster is
also aimed at getting the middle class to go to war. They are both aimed at the
same audience and they both use methods of persuasion to their captive audience
but for very different reasons.
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