Images are part of the way we communicate and, through the Language and Literature course, it would be impossible to talk about how language operates in the world without considering the operations and impact of images. Many of the texts we encounter include images and some texts, such as road signs or paintings in an art gallery, might be made of images alone. Images are an integral part of most advertisement texts. This section will give you the opportunity to understand images better by learning how to analyze various components of visual images such as layout, use of lines, shapes and forms, light and colour and so on:

• The Visual Techniques Toolkit
• Commonly Used Techniques in Visual Advertising
• Creative Typography in Advertising

Class Activity: pick up the pieces

Read this analysis of a PSA from Australia. PSAs are a special kind of advertisement text that inform people about an issue of public concern. The aim of a PSA is to persuade people to change their behaviour rather than buy a product or service.

Find a visual text such as an advert, film poster, magazine cover or even painting. Present the text in the middle of a document and annotate this text using some of the techniques from the Visual Techniques Toolkit (above). Try to comment on the effect of these techniques as well. Present your findings to your classmates.

Learner Portfolio

TBC

Area of Exploration Guiding Conceptual Question

The cultural and historical factors that affect the content and style of a text is called its context of production. A text’s context of production is fixed – it is written by a particular person, in a particular place, over a particular time period. As you might expect, this has an influence on not only what is in the text, but how it is written about or presented.

Use the following resource containing adverts from different time periods – you will immediately recognise which are more modern than the other. Working through this resource will help you focus on the guiding conceptual question:

• How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of a text?

Paper 1 Text Type Focus: Visual Texts

At the end of your course you will be asked to analyze unseen texts (1 at Standard Level and 2 at Higher Level) in an examination. You will be given a guiding question that will focus your attention on formal or stylistic elements of the text(s), and help you decode the text(s)’ purpose(s). Below is an advertising campaign that makes prominent use of Visual Images. As the images all come from the same campaign there are clear similarities between the messages they give and the visual techniques used to convey messages and create effects. Note down these tropes and add the texts to your Learner Portfolio; you will want to revise text types thoroughly before your Paper 1 exam. The second text (Uniqlo advert) is presented in the form of Paper 1; you could write a sample response to this text as practice for this paper:

• Volkswagon Adverts
• Practice Paper 1 (Uniqlo Advert)