WordPress #4

WordPress #3

Historically speaking, photography has, for close to a century, pushed the boundaries of capturing moments of great significance, including the Kent State massacre. The Kent State massacre happened on May 4, 1970, during the middle of the Vietnam War. A peaceful protest gone wrong, the Kent State massacre was an act of police brutality that ended up serving as a moment in time that would be forever be remembered as one of the key turning points of disapproval over the Vietnam War(Thomas and Hensley 1-2).

During this period of time image capturing tools were given unprecedented access to battlefields, cities, and areas that were devastated by the results of war, conflict, and violence (Teaching With Photographs 1-2). Like the rest of the country, photography was experiencing a revolution in which every painful reality, no matter how grotesque and unsettling it may be, was captured and published for the general public’s viewing. This documentation of horrors related to war could be seen in photos that extend beyond the Kent State massacre; such photos include Nick Ut’s photograph of 9-year-old Phan Thj Kim Phuc running the streets of Vietnam naked and Eddie Adam’s photograph of Nguyễn Văn Lém being executed(Picture Power 1-2). The Kent State massacre photo represents photography being used as an outlet to capture the horrors that might have previously been glanced over under and repressed in generations of the past.

In regards to the photo itself, the photo represents a wonderful snapshot of the desperation, anger, and frustration that was present at the time of the Vietnam War. You have an obviously pained and sorrowed woman framed in the center of the photo over a corpse. The framing of the angered woman with the confused, and almost indifferent, onlookers standing to the side of the corpse creates a dramatic story of the protest and captures the intense emotion of the woman to the audience (Krause 90).

Like the contrast of the indifferent people and the horrified woman, the photograph also highlights traditional American cultural values, such as the embracing of the freedom of speech and assembly by presenting the absence of it. The irony of this photo, and perhaps one of the most tragic aspects of it, is that the heinous massacre was not done by foreign terrorists or criminals, but by the very own police enforcement of America(Hensley and Thomas 1-3). This can explain some of the emotion and tragedy that is portrayed by the shrieking woman.

Krause, Jim. Photo Idea Index. Cincinnati, OH: HOW, 2005. Print.

Hensley, Thomas and Jerry Lewis. “THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS AT KENT

STATE UNIVERSITY: THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY.”

Kent State University Departmental Site. Kent State University.

Web. 15 Feb. 2012.

“Picture Power: Vietnam Napalm Attack.” BBC News – Home.

Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://news.bbc.co.uk&gt;

 “Teaching With Documents:
The War in Vietnam – 
A Story in

Photographs” National Archives and Records Administration.

Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.archives.gov/education/

lessons/vietnamphotos/>.

Visual Literacy Advertisement

The photograph and advertisement that we created this week focuses on the skateboard accessory “slide gloves”. It is a lesser-known accessory to people that don’t skate and even to people that do skate. However, the point of advertising is to effectively bring attention to a product in order to get customers to purchase it. With our advertisement we used various research done on skateboarding and skateboarding accessories as well as photographic and design techniques to make our advertisement as affective as possible.

Our brand targets male teens and young adults as seen by various skateboarding brand advertisements associated with companies such as Element, Volcrom, and Flip(Element). These skate boarding and skate boarding apparel companies heavily feature athletic teen males as the animate subject in order to persuade other male teens to buy their products. Although the female population of skateboarding is growing, advertisers note that only 15% of the skateboarding population is comprised of the female gender, making it reach more of their audience if they feature male teens (Skateboard Statistics, 2). Advertisers in the skateboarding industry also note that 1 in 7 youth are skateboarders, meaning that out of the 13-million skateboarders in the U.S., 93.7% were younger than 24 (Skateboard Statistics, 1). Clearly, a heavy majority of these skateboarders are young male teens/younger adults who enjoy the sport. With that being said, it only made sense for our advertisement to feature a young male in order to reach the concentrated population of the skateboard community.

However, just because females compromise a minority in the skateboarding/skateboard apparel industry does not mean that advertisers should not feature them as well(Skateboard Statistics 2) . Reports state that skateboarding is one of the fastest growing sports among females today, allowing for many brands and companies to have new market opportunities. Advertisers who include females in their advertisements in marketing skate products will be able to take up a new untapped part of the buying population that they may have previously not targeted.

We believed in creating an advertisement for the skating accessory of a slide glove since skateboarding has become a staple and hobby for many young teenagers today. Skateboarding and the skateboard has become a sort of pop-culture staple in today’s society, similar to the pogo stick and hula hoop in the past. We felt that skateboarding accessories, like the slide glove, could be effectively advertised for since as stated before 1/7 youth owns a skateboard. By bringing attention to an accessory you can target buyers that already own a skateboard and new customers that may want to give skateboarding a try. With that being said the photograph we used was a shot that used motion, continuous shoots, font techniques, and colour to attract buyers.

The shot is captioned with black and white font, colours that are enough to catch the targets eye but not give the advertisement more chaos and confusion that is not needed. In this case, the simplicity of the font and its colour aids the audience in reading and figuring out the purpose of the product rather than distracts the audience because of a terrible font. The slogan is coloured differently than the actual product in order for the audience to notice the difference between the slogan and the product (Williams 186-187). The product, highlighted in white rather than black, becomes something the audience distinctly remembers. We also paired the white font highlighted product “Sliding Gloves” with a curvy font. This felt appropriate for the shot since so much action and motion is conveyed in the photograph where that it would only make sense to continue keeping that motion with the way the font was presented, allowing for the direction of the sliding to also be presented in the font type (Williams 182).

This motion of the photograph pulls the reader into the action of skateboarding and sliding instead of just presenting a photograph of a skateboard. The photograph, taken with continuous shooting, allows for the motion and action of sliding and skateboarding to be realistically presented. The editing and splicing of three photographs together creates more motion than if a non-continuous type of shooting was used (Krause 166).

The colours of both the gloves and skateboard pop also help create a contrast that draws in the audience. The colours of the sliding gloves and skateboard pop out against the more cool colours of the street and grass while the subject skates, allowing the audience to focus more on the gloves and skateboard which helps drive the photograph. (Krause 106-108) The neon and vibrant red found on the gloves and skateboard is the right mixture of being visually stimulating to the audience without being too overbearing and distracting.

Overall our project combines vibrant colours, motion, and font styles in order to bring in and retain the attention of the key targeted demographic, young adult/teen males. Photo and design aspects such as continuous shooting, colour schemes, and font design helped us produce an advertisement that we believe effectively entices the market to

ElementUnitedStates.com. Element, website, website. Jan. 31, 2012.

Krause, Jim. “Photo Idea Index.” Cincinnati, Ohio: How Books, 2005. Book.

“Skateboard” Stastics” lakesidepark.com. Lakeside Skatepark Committee,

website. Jan. 31, 2012.

Williams, Robin. “The Non-Designer’s Design Book.” Berkeley, California: Peachpit

Press, 2008. Book.