Design Principles in Advertisements (IV.)

This series analyzes the design principles often used in advertisements and discuss how these principles are used to attract attention, influence the opinion or convince the potential consumer for purchase. This is the final post in the series.

Bad advertising is still advertising. Or is it?

This part will show several anti-examples of advertisements.  The real advertisement is supposed to take advantage of the well known design principles and make people believe the communicated message. However, these several anti advertisements seriously violate these rules. The end effect is that people are not attracted, but on contrary are repulsed by these poorly designed advertisements.

Very first thing that will hit your eyes on the image above are those amateur photos. Author of the advertisement just googled some images of fat people, cropped their heads and directly used the images in the advertisement. The images are cropped really poorle, that there is even a part of a hand of a third person.
Comparison is something we are really good at. We can easily spot that the woman on the image lost some weight. But did she also change a color of her skin? It seems that product this advertisement tries to sell is not even working, because they used two different people to demonstrate the weight reduction.
Another issue is wrong is selection of color combinations. The red and green together does not make any good. It makes a kind of blur around the letters and it is quite difficult to read.
Some say that bad advertising is still advertising. But would you buy product this advertisement tries to sell? I would not!

Are you still going to be influenced by ads?

This series were aimed to show some basic tricks that are used by advertisers to influence the masses of people. These tricks are very little things but the final effect is huge.
Specific layout of the objects on advertisement can put emphasis on various object or ideas. It can be also used to hide some facts and manipulate the opinion of the advertisement viewer.
Advertisers can make you feel different just by selecting different colors and cause emotional response they desire. Dark colors communicates more elegance, strong saturated colors attracts your attention and desaturated colors are used to make you pay attention on the content itself rather then form of presentation.
We are people and that is what advertisers take advantage of. We use our first judgment to create the opinion about the things we come across during our daily life. When we get into conversation with attractive people we tend to believe them more. We also judge the appearance of the people we interact with. Mature faced individuals also tend to persuade us easier whereas the round-faced persons with baby-look appearance communicate more innocence and niceness.
Advertisers also use the brainwashing methods, but they are very hidden and subtle. They put the idea into our head which will get into conflict with our deeply rooted believes. We will try to solve the conflict most probably by the means the advertiser indented to. This is called cognitive dissonance. Advertiser can also train us for specific reaction to various stimuli. By extensive exposure to the advertisement our subconscious changes the way how it reacts and advertiser literally makes us do the things they want. This is used in the principle classical conditioning.