Reading Response: Meggs, Chandler, Sells & Gonzalez

Notes from:

Type & Image by Meggs, pages 41, 62-65
Intertextuality (“Roland Barthes introduced...”, to Levi-Strauss) by Daniel Chandler

The Language of Advertising by Peter Sells & Sierra Gonzalez

I never really put together that the way that captions were written in newspapers and articles were done for a specific reason, to make you feel a certain way. I mean, I came from a journalist and English major background, so I knew that writing can have emotion, but I didn’t really think about captions. From the journalism background, the writer of the article often is not the one captioning the photographs or naming the article; all the writer does is create the article.

Anchorage is often used in relation to advertisements, but it can be used in other mediums such as film narrations or speech bubble conversations or thought bubbles. Although the main text from an article, the image, or illustrations may appear as though they’re neutral on a given subject, the anchorage used is the added text to illustrate the meaning of the article or image that gives more of an impact and emotional connection to the audience to feel one way or the other. For Graphic Design, text and images are a constantly present relationship; these two items also bring a potential for multiple problems in any given piece. 

Roland Barthe stated, “Formerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination.” This statement is very true in current American culture. Advertisements, designs, art, articles, and much else of popular culture relies not only on individual item meaning, but also the ideas of accepted cultural ideas, morals, or other ideas that can be imagined. Although text and words have their own meaning by themselves; they have the potential to mean even more when used with each other.

I thought this was a very telling statement that caught my attention. “Language has powers which not only exceed individual control but also determine subjectivity”. I know that all language has meanings, but this statement really brought it into focus. Often, I think we forgot how much language, let that be syntax or grammar really effects the way that we present and interact with people.

Anchorage - text or image added to further explain/develop a point
Relay - text and image relationships that were complementary to one another
Intertextuality - the relationships between text and image based on their visual and philosophical meanings
Visual Verbal Synergy - the relationship between words and images to create one overall message