"A stable body of ideas expressed in essential form" is what Lupton describes the final product of "text" as. Staying on track with my vintage advertisements, I would like to point out that this one in particular has horrid placing of text. None of it is pointing to the product being sold and the different blocks on text are scattered throughout without any clear reason to why they are placed there. The kerning seems OK in this, except for the bottom paragraph is very hard to read because the text is so small and the x-height combined with the particular font chosen does not make it easy on the eyes!
None of the fonts used are in consistent either- and the script in the upper right corner along with the tiny block print in the bottom left is so hard to read that this ad serves more like an article (a piece that you have to spend time reading through in order to really get the message). Clearly, the graphics and design did not do a very good job on catching our attention, therefore even if it was an article, I don't think many of us would spend time going through it! All in all, this fails and could only be fixed by choosing about two different font families- less words, bigger message- and playing with both the font and graphics to get the reader or onlooker interested in the article.
Yekaterina Grishchenko
I would have to agree with Yekaterina, that there is too much going on in this ad, but I do think that there are some things that do work. For being such a retro piece, the illustration is promiscuous and therefore an attention getter. The tag/head line is also very uninformative which, in this case, works because you are more likely to read more of the ad.
ReplyDeleteLike what Yekaterina said though, the type and text is a mess. The mix between a flush right and the justified alignment does not give much direction for the reader. The typography shows no conformity and this disorganization does reflect on the product. I am also not a fan of the horizontal dotted line through the top of the ad. Instead they should have used the white space to frame the headline.
~Alyssa Hillman