English Media

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Kayla Gutkin English coursework

The advert which I have chosen appeared in the magazine ‘Cosmopolitan. The target audience is women aged eighteen to thirty. It’s advertising a nail polish and lipstick. The aspirations of the woman who read this are to be pretty, confident, fun, in charge and responsible at the same time.

        To begin with there are two main images in the picture. One is a lady who captures the viewer’s eyes as she has got shiny red lips, with another lady just behind her gripping her arm showing off her red nail polish. It seems to me that the pictures give a position of independent women who feel confident about themselves but classy at the same time, although it also gives an outlook of a fun, girly sense which makes one happy.                                                                                               The denotations of this advert are the lipstick and nail varnish. The connotation is making one think of a fun, classy and sophisticated attitude combined with sexy and confident. Particularly the image of the body, dominates the page but not to the extent that the other images and writing is not clear or visible. Consequently, the viewer’s attention is drawn to the woman and the contrast of her skin colour to the product (lipstick and nail varnish) shows great distinction. This highlights the effect of the bright, attention seeking affect it has. Surprisingly, there is no famous person or celebrity endorsement in the advert although this could mean that it is not needed as one of the points which the advert is trying to show the reader is that and one can wear this, that you don’t have to be special or extra beautiful.  

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The layout of the advertisement is a significant factor in directing the readers’ thoughts and affecting their emotional response. To state the obvious the text is laid out in four categories, each with a heading in bold as well as bullet points. Naturally this makes it clear for the reader to read and therefore one may take time to read it instead of just skimming through. Moreover, the colours used for the font is white on a dark background all italic and the subheading in bold. As an advantage, this brings out the writing again making it easier for the ...

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