Blog Assignment # 2

      The original image creates a contrast by having the background and bathtub a completely white color while the shoes the women are wearing are colorful in red, green, and yellow. This would also bring to attention that emphasis is placed on both the shoes as well as the instruments in each one of their hands. It allows for the eye to be drawn to these items right away. The designer of this shoe advertisement most likely wanted to draw attention to their product, the shoes, as well as draw attention to the women as being Grammy-award winning country artists, the Dixie Chicks. A form of emphasis is also given to the lead singer, because she seems to be the only artist directly looking into the camera, while the others are either looking away or have their eyes closed. The color allows less attention to be made to the shower curtain, the bathroom tiles, and the showerhead. When first examining this image, the narration might lead the viewer to think that this is a happy image because all of the women are laughing or smiling. The image is conventional because it is a typical advertisement that is meant to persuade consumers to buy the product. Some may suggest that the image is suggestive because the women are not fully clothed. The image creates balance by having the two women on the outside holding an instrument. It is also unbalanced because the two women to the left are crossing their legs one way (to the left) while the one to the right is crossing her legs to the right. The original image contains little to no text, so the image alone is left to speak for itself. It is up to the viewer or whomever is viewing the image to draw meaning from the image and it is ultimately from their point of view.

Adding captions or text to an original image changes the way an image is perceived. In Picturing Texts (p. 52-55), I learned that “When we use visuals as a form of communication, we count on broader cultural and historical contexts”. I agree with Roland Barthes in his argument that “form” or writing is more creative than language or style. When we view images, an image can be concise and create a mental picture or excite our emotions, but like Mitchell Stephens  (Picturing Texts) pointed out, we cannot create spatial or temporal connections as we could with both writing and images. As with this assignment, adding text to the image changes the desired effect. Before the text, the designer would have wanted the viewer to look at the shoes and maybe wanted the viewer to be excited and ultimately want to buy them. It is simply a marketing tool. With placing the text about children in underdeveloped countries having to go barefoot because they cannot afford a pair of shoes, it may bring the viewer to think about how superficial our society is with the numerous amounts of styles, colors, and sizes we can purchase shoes in. In my attempt to be creative, I wanted to draw less attention to the shoes and more on how we could give back to communities. In this sense, I used words to bring to mind mental images of village children in a country such as Peru, where most are walking around without shoes. I created an image that would have normally been conventional and added my own “form” to it, which then allowed it to become creative in the sense that now the image draws a completely different meaning.