COLOR IN ADVERTISING
MARLBORO RED
Marlboro Red is the strongest of all the Marlboro cigarettes. Designers could have chosen to use red to market the strongest of their cigarettes because of the symbolic toughness, strength, passion, and danger (also maybe why they used the image of the crazy horseback rider). In addition, this ad uses contrast. The contrast between the red and the white attracts your eye and also aids in the flow and organization of a piece. In this piece my eye is immediately drawn to the red design element on top and the red shirt, symbolizing the type of cigarette, red. My eye then goes down the image to the type and my brain connects that it must be Marlboro Red.
TARGET
This Target ad generously uses repetition, not only within the individual sections of the ad with the repetition of circles in alternating colors but also the consistency throughout all of their marketing. The Non-Designers Design book says that the basic purpose of repetition is to unify and add visual interest. We will want to look further (and in this case buy) if a piece looks interesting.
THE HEART SAFETY MATCHES
This is an image of “The Heart” safety match that I found online. In this marketing, you can see proximity between the designs in the corners, the text, and the image of the heart. Though it all has to be smushed onto a very small matchbox, all the elements are connected, just like all the matches are smushed into the box…?
HEINZ
Heinz uses red for one obvious reason when advertising its ketchup… ketchup is red. The Non-Designers Design Book states when talking about proximity that one thing to avoid is creating relationships with elements that don't relate to each other, and if they are not related to move them apart. Even though the bottle's main design element is far from the text, we can still tell that they are connected. The purpose of proximity is organization, and this ad looks simple and easy to understand.
SAINT LAURENT
In this Saint Laurent fall 2020 Ad campaign, we can see the use of danger, lust, and sex appeal. Though this ad doesn't exhibit much text, the text that is shown is aligned in the middle of the image. The Non-Designers Design book discusses that center alignment often feels weak because the strength of the line is not used. I would argue that for this specific purpose, it works because the main focus is on the image, and the text is just a second thought. We want the viewer to focus on the image first.