Ads, they're everywhere

Taking from Maggie and Leslie’s blogs, I am intrigued by what they had to say about ads as art. For me particularly, my goal is to be a graphic designer for a marketing group, which I fortunately got a start with my job this summer. I found it interesting to hear their reactions to ads and or billboards, as I was lucky enough to actually design some billboards that have been placed around the state and understand what went into the process of creating them. I was somewhat saddened to hear that ads can be seen as invasive and undesirable. I do agree that there is an overwhelming amount of them, but from my standpoint, I try to absorb whatever I can so I can make a better ad. Maggie pointed out that ads are virtually everywhere and that it takes a special advertisement to really stand out and make an impact on you. In relation to McLuhan, this all makes sense in that we are desensitized by the plethora of information our senses our receiving. He states that changes only occur when there are radical changes in the general structure or feeling of things. So does this mean in order to have an effective ad, it must be so drastic and outrageous to even get noticed?

Something else I wondered about had to do with again what Maggie said about an author of a book and his target market. In my opinion, this is the difficulty due to diversity and different attention structures. We are different – there’s no contesting that and if one person deems a writing style ineffective or lacking, someone else may find it Godly or entirely stimulating. Who knows?

Just another idea that this has sprung is the idea: Isn’t everything a form of advertising? Well, at least physical commodities? Actually, I take that back. Couldn’t my personality and how I converse with a friend be a way of advertising some experience I had? I know this may be slightly off topic, but that puzzles me. As I sit here, I look around my living room and see that everything is some form of advertising. (So, sorry Chris – you can’t escape it!) So this seems to be why we are so desensitized, but then again to play devil’s advocate, are we really that desensitized? We are a commodity driven society and like it or not we will continue to buy things that we feel we need. What is it that is telling us that we need something? A: It’s always some form of ad.

Finally, ads as art. I’m not about to disagree since I’m a DMS student that makes ads. Currently, for another class I am reading all about semiotics (the study of signs) and it’s interesting how much our lifestyles are shaped by our culture, which in turn is forming all these signs. As an example, our culture which reads left to right will view billboards differently than a Chinese culture may that reads right to left. If we were to split the ad vertically, we would view the left as something that is familiar and the right as something that is new or to be discovered. It is these sort of things that must be taken into account when creating ads, more importantly, effective ads that target this society. This could mean that different cultures respond differently when different senses are stimulated. So in that case, maybe we are stuck too deep into the idea of visual stimulation and that is why our ads have developed into this art form.