Adams 1 Carson Adams Mrs.

Jana Richards AP Language and Composition/CE English 1010 October 8, 2013 Visual Analysis The peacefully exhausted sleepers in the ZzzQuil advertisement found in Fitness Magazine portrays a tone of absolute candidness. The real tone is not calm or sleep related, but the advertisement only attempts to communicate a tone of honesty. The colors are not vibrant, the text is not flagrantly braggart, and the people, the images in general, are not beautiful. Everything is arguably ugly in comparison to the regularly pristine advertisements seen, but incredibly real; the people look honest, the room looks like someones own living space. This ad is highly effective as it feels so honest that the message is communicated Sleep so well that... Well, you know. The ad features a couple, both in a deep sleep on the upper half of the page. This couple looks to be in complete disarray: the women sprawled out entirely and nearly pushing the man, tucked softly and gently like a child while the woman edges him off the bed, clearly laying partially atop him. The deep purple of the sheets comes in several shades as the folds of the blankets throw shadows and catch the light in the valleys and peaks respectively. Theres an element of disorder in the room as well: items strewn on the floor and pillows turned around. The deep purple of the bottom half of them ad mostly features negative space filled with bright spots like stars. The short quips of the ad are tagline statements. Its just for sleep it reads.

Adams 2 The colors in the ad are deep, not dark, and rich. Theres no dilution in the dark purple of the bedroom. Medicine with deep colors denotes potency, or the notion goes as such. Concentration of color is key in the body of the advertisement, and the deep purple branding feels equally honest. The product is highly concentrated and potent, and youre not getting less than you payed for. Essentially, the sleep medication is powerful, but not because theyve told you this but because the medicine is visibly, candidly potent. Purple dominates the image, and is the color of the product. This shade of purple is honest as well; it makes no promises of fast and furiously fun like the bright neons and reds of regular advertisements do. Its simply purple, a royal, but rather boring, color. The colors of the advertisement are a small but important part of establishing the mood of candidness. The text is wonderfully bland, but equally self-deprecating. Because sleep is a beautiful thing. The image, however, is utterly and truthfully ugly. This small recognition, that sleep when sick or exhausted is rarely beautiful with well-pressed sheets and sheer night-gowns, but somehow always beautiful in that the feeling it gives you undeniably incredible. The text in total only reads ZzzQuil SLEEP-AID. BECAUSE SLEEP IS A BEAUTIFUL THING. The non-habit forming sleep-aid from the makers of NyQuil. Its not for colds. Its not for pain. Its just for sleep so you can wake refreshed. Nothing grandiose is going on here, and the text doesnt necessarily support the image. Its meant to stand in stern contrast to the other more disordered elements of the advertisement to highlight the underlying simplicity of the product. It just helps you sleep. The punctuation used is also notable; using periods is rather uncommon in advertising. This punctuation increases the discreteness of the text as only short quips of text read out. Not elaborate claims or beautiful imagery, just a simple series of statements that define the product.

Adams 3 This is what it isnt. This is what it isnt. This is what it is. The tone, that its a sort of un-ad, continues to be reinforced. Theres nothing to read in between the lines; theres nothing attempting to trick the reader; theres nothing convoluted, complicated, or disclaimed; these bold and concrete statements are what you expect to hear from a friend that has tried the product and was so impressed by it that they just had to explain it to you and tell you that theres no catch. While the nature of the text and the image are totally different, they communicate the same honest tone in conjunction. Finally, the image portrays disarray with an undertone of serenity by using contrasting lighting, roughness and noise, gender role reversal, and contortion. The lighting is absolutely chaotic from a photographic standpoint. The whole room is side lit from a very narrow angle which creates areas of light and dark in close proximity to one another that are extremely distinct and noticeable. The woman is also very brightly lit while the man is in shadow. This contrast is by very definition chaotic and generally extremely distracting; it shows that there is discontinuity and a lack of homogeneity. The broader observation of the image is that there is roughness and noise throughout the entire image. Beyond the obvious wrinkling in the sheets, theres noise from the seemingly random objects on the floor adjacent to the bed. The pillows are turned out of the default position as well, an added level of dissonance in that it defies convention. Next, societal gender roles are not conformed to in this photo. The woman, who is acting much more conventionally masculine, is dominating the subdued man who is nearly in fetal position. While the man here portrays the usual serenity given to women in average advertisements, the woman sleeps sprawled out, mouth open and mid-snore. This is perhaps the most pronounced oddity that brings the image to a level of not only physical disorder but cultural disorder as well. The

Adams 4 womans contorted position is, undeniably, disordered. This image is ugly. Disorder is ugliness. So why would the advertisement seek to achieve aesthetic displeasure? The tone of honesty comes not explicitly from the ugliness, rather, it comes from an implied reliance on cultural knowledge of advertisements and regular sleep behavior. The mind nags, sub-consciously, Why would they show me how it really is? We sense honesty from the fact that we see no signs of deception, and, interestingly, we mentally rush to the aid of the advertisement to defend it from our aesthetically displeased conscious. Theyre just showing us the truth our sub-conscious argues, explaining the ugliness so as not to allow the disarray to repel us. Its clever. Arguably brilliant. The text and the image tell different stories; objectively, they depreciate the other. The color tells us something vaguely, but nothing worth arguing over. When associated with psychological and cultural bias, however, the tone is obvious to any observer. It is the totality of the advertisement that is so effective.