Visual Elements
Scenario
You have been hired by a large law enforcement agency to analyze the images used on advertising billboards in both urban and suburban regions. The billboards visually display a new campaign message to improve neighborhood safety.
During your analysis, you find that the images used on billboards in the urban areas are exactly the same as the images used in the suburban areas. Both images show parents happily talking with law enforcement officers while children run over green lawns having a fun balloon fight. You decide that these images are not sending proper perceptual messages. You decide to create a visual analysis video for the law enforcement agency to share with the administration.
For the video visual analysis, you realize you will need to find two new images that are quite different from one another. One image will be used on the urban billboard, and the other image will be used on the suburban billboard. In your video presentation, you will compare and contrast how each image utilizes the following:
- Compare and contrast the visual elements of cultural familiarity. Explain why it is important to use culturally familiar visuals that are quite different in the urban and suburban billboard images. Include specific visuals in your visual analysis.
- Identify specific visual examples of the following cognitive elements: memories, experiences, and expectation. Compare and contrast how urban and suburban viewers may be affected differently by those specific cognitive visual elements.
- Explain the difference between urban and suburban viewers’ emotionally engagement with each of the billboard images.
- Identify visual semiotic codes in both images: metonymic, analogical, displaced, and condensed. Discuss the importance of using these codes. Include specific visuals in each part of your visual analysis.
As you outline your ideas for the video, you decide to record your verbal analysis while analyzing the two visuals in less than seven minutes for added clarity.