Advertisement Analysis: Seventeen Magazine

Every ad that appears within a magazine always has some kind of purpose or intention for the readers. Most advertisements that are put in magazines are to persuade the readers of the magazine to want to buy the product being sold. A great amount of thought goes behind these ads to make it appealing to the eye and to control where the eyes move around the ad. In one particular magazine by the name of “Seventeen Magazine” the publishers first grab the readers attention by having Nina Dobret on the cover wearing a bright orange, pink, and red outfit. On the cover it also has bold text that reads “50 cute boots inside”, “best fall clothes under $20”, and “hair products” in bright letters. This type of magazine is clearly for teenage girls or women …show more content…
According to the article “Elements of Effective Layout” a good layout should attract the reader’s attention and should control the order in which the reader views the elements of the ad(Cohen). According to Dorothy Cohen, balance is how the matter of weight is distributed in the ad. This article states that “In layout it is keyed to the optical center of an advertisement, the point which the reader’s eye designates as the center of an area”(Cohen 681). To know if the ad is equally distributed one could picture a vertical line splitting up the ad into two parts. If the ad is equally distributed both sides should be pretty similar. There are informal and formal balance in ads and this ad by Olay is formal balance. It is formal balance because when imagining a vertical line passing through the ad each side is almost identical. However, if one was two separate the ad into two parts the right side would contain more of Carrie Underwood’s facial features and the left side would show more of her back, ear, and hair. If separated the music notes would be pretty similar on both sides and there would be an equal amount of text on both sides.  According to Cohen, proportion helps develop order and create an appealing look. Proportion has to do with how everything on an ad is divided up. In advertising, proportion is the relationship between the size, the amount of space, and the width. The amount of light present and the amount of color to noncolor is also including in proportion(Cohen). The ad shows proportion by having the same amount of space on both sides of Carrie Underwood’s head to have room for the music notes. The ad also shows good proportion by having a good amount of darker blue to light blues. The background is a light blue, as well as Carrie’s tank top. The darker colors are only in the dark blue music notes