On Visual Communication In Print Advertisements

This is attempt at an interdisciplinary study involving signification from semiotics, emotional appeals from psychology, and advertising principles from communication.Visual elements in advertising have become an increasingly important part of people's daily life. In an picture-reading era, successful visual advertisements, invested with emotional appeals, persuade in an increasingly clever and natural way. In an effort to analyze visual communication in print advertisements, the author employs semiotics as a toolIn the foreword, the author traces the cause of her choice of research, of how she came to be interested in sign analysis in her study. In the thesis, the author first introduces the definition and the goal of advertising communication, followed by a relevant literature review of the theory of signification in semiotics.As ads are designed to persuade, the author introduces two patterns of persuasion– the rational and the emotional, and regards the latter as worth our special attention. In a stage of consumption, consumers demand deeper degree of emotional satisfaction. Having stated that, the thesis moves on to discuss six principles of advertising– clarity, popularity, differentiation, vividness, relevance and credibility. Using semiotic tools, the author provides an ad analysis in detail following each principle. In this way the author is trying to combine the perspective of the advertiser and the perspective of the viewer. She believes that this is a more powerful way to explore the effectiveness of advertising communication.