"The Sticky Embrace of Beuaty”

IWA: 2/6/13

Summary: In the article "The Sticky Embrace of Beuaty”, Anne Wysocki attempts to tell her audience how companies use beauty (both pictorially and textually) to catch passerby attention. She argues that beautiful writing for advertisements comes from textual layout that catches the attention of the viewer as well as appalling designs. In order to make an advertisement successful, companies must take these things into consideration.

Synthesis: Generally this article didn’t make me think of any other pieces but since I have to find something it relates to I would say it reminds me, in a way, of Allen’s piece in that both say some pieces of work may not originally be perfect but they will get some sort of reaction which is good. The advertisement is obviously good in that it draws the viewer’s attention but it also gets a pretty large reaction.

QD 1: It is socially accepted that we stop and react to the ad much like she. Wysocki explains that the layout is brilliant. Apart from being distracted by a half naked woman, the text is set up right at the point our eyes would generally stop at in the picture. In addition they are shaped much like the woman’s body meaning that we will pay closer attention. I would say I would agree with her point. Upon first looking at the advertisements, the left one quickly bored me since it was a jumble of text while the one on the right was more appealing the way it had been laid out to be easier on the eyes.

QD 2: I found the way Wysocki set up her article to be fairly interesting but overall pretty bland. To me it was just a copy of everything we have read before this with a bunch of paragraphs and a few quotes here and there. In addition her use of hi-liter seemed pretty unprofessional. I suppose the one thing that was slightly helpful was towards the beginning when she was explaining the ad layout she included arrows to express what she was trying to say. Overall though it was not visually appealing.

QD 3: Although the ad did not make me want to buy the book it did immediately catch my attention. I think the creator knew what they were doing while marketing and would easily be able to catch the eye of passerby. I’m sure somebody, somewhere would have an urge to buy it after seeing the advertisement.

AE 1: I think my view on why art is up for interpretation is pretty skewed. In high school I took a college level art class that forced us to look into the “deeper meaning” of a piece and over time, this two year course taught me that art is supposed to speak to the viewer and that everybody is supposed to get a little something different out of it or else it would not have been created. Therefore I believe a single piece is up for interpretation because the creator made it that way so that people will be more enthusiastic about their work. Obviously I feel my view on a particular piece is different from those around me because art speaks to each of us in a different way and because we all have different experiences, we all see the piece differently.

AE 2: Again I turn to my high school art class. I believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder because, like the artwork, we all have different experiences and brains and therefore see beauty in a different way. That in mind, I also believe our society sets up basic “laws” that define beauty. In America, for example, being skinny with good bone structure is sexy while other cultures would reject this and say a woman is truly beautiful when she is covered from head to toe. So I believe beauty is a mixture of the two beliefs.

MM: This statement relates to Wysocki’s article because it essentially describes the advertisement. The creator knew they had to attract passerby attention but in order to successfully do that, they had to “push against the conventions of those expectations”. In other words they had to make it somewhat scandalous/seductive. I believe this does apply to visual art in some cases but most of the time it does not. An artist knows their piece will speak to the viewer on some sort of level and that if they truly conveyed their piece properly, the viewer will walk away with some sort of emotion no matter how much they pushed the piece.

Afterthoughts: I found this piece to be a nice break from the constant “write a paper like THIS or you will fail!!” It was nice to read about a different form of writing too and see inside an advertiser’s mind and how they attempt to get attention from their audience.