Organization in print advertisement

The Image and Text are put together in some Organization, which is an important component of the overall advertisement. The Organization can suggest coherence, some kind of order in which the parts are interpreted, and relevance, which determines the particular kind of meaning that the advertisement has.

Let's look at an example, 13 Crown Royal (Rolling Stone, July 4, 2002), which has a quite simple Image and a quite simple Text. We can investigate the Organization by removing the text (13bare) or by moving the text down and left (13left). How do you feel that the meaning conveyed by the advertisement is altered under these changes? Look carefully at the images and consult your intuitions as to how the meaning of the advertisement may be changed.

A slightly more complex organization can be seen in 33 Symantec (Rolling Stone, May 9, 2002). There is a very strong diagonal effect in the images, from the Symantec symbol to the yellow square (what is that yellow square?) to the woman's head to the cat. The yellow straight lines connect "System Repair" through the yellow square to the laptop computer that the woman is using. This particular advertisement is discussed in detail in Unit 5.