Media Analysis

Introduction

The two elements in this particular advertisement, the printed advertisement and the accompanying website, have Microsoft as the main producer and product. Both of the advertisements require an active reader in navigation and interpretation but in different ways. The printed advertisement plays on words, colours and imagination and the accompanying website follows up on that. In the following I will look at different elements in relation to connection between text and image, what the image can represent and how this is produced.

Analysis

The advertisement has the title Start something Sonic and was published in the magazine Wired, August 2005, on page 59. It is the size of one normal page in a standard magazine; its measurements are 28.5 x 22 cm, so fairly small and inviting. On a pre-iconographical level, what we see is a picture of a young woman, placed in the right hand corner. Coming "out" of her we see wires, pianos, headphones and stars, going up towards the left hand corner. In the middle there are outlines of a person with a microphone and another playing the guitar. In the top right hand corner is the text: Your potential. Our passion. Microsoft and in the bottom left hand corner is the anchorage text. In connection with that we see the Windows XP logo. Underneath that we are referred to the accompanying website www.windows.com.

The woman is a photograph while the rest is artificial made graphics and text. The background is completely white thus very plain and simple. So while the young woman is a representation from reality Ð'- mimesis- the rest of the image is metaphorical. It is obvious what the images represent, though they are graphics and not photographs. These graphics of wires, stars, pianos, and the people acting as a musical group, are all something we, by the use of connotations, are able to read and also to connect it with the title Start something Sonic and thereby get an idea and feel about the product they are trying to sell. The connotations we get from these icons of headphones, pianos, microphone is those of stardom, being famous and performing on stage. These connotations are somewhat bold and immense but when connecting them with the text and product you get the feeling that you personally can create something you would normally just be daydreaming about. For us as the receiver of the advertisement we have to make an iconographic description of the advertisement and to enable us to do this we have to consider all the elements in the picture. The anchorage text in the picture indicates how the receiver should understand the advertisement and thus the stories in the image. In order to make that connection I will explain what kind of visual language, including modality markers are used and explain how intertextuality is produced. The focus in this given advertisement is that the reader together with Windows XP and Microsoft's other products can produce something professional but still unique and personal.

Visual language and modality markers

Visual language is very important when analysing this type of image and text. One needs to consider the way it has been constructed in order to tell a story, sell a product and produce an interest to the reader. In this case the story is to be starting something from the heart and something unique.

The composition of the image is diagonal which I have demonstrated below in fig. 1. When the image is composed in this particular manner, diagonal, it creates a conflict in the action of the image. It also makes the image more dynamic and dramatic than it would have been if the image had been symmetric and harmonious. The action line is clearly coming from the young woman's heart and up towards the right hand of the image. The graphical illustrations are evidently "exploding" out of the window placed where the woman's heart would be, indicating the ability to create something from your heart and soul. In general the left hand side of an image can carry more and stronger elements than the right hand side, without disturbing the balance of the image. If that is the case, one will often find stronger colours, bigger figures and more dynamics on the left hand side of the image, thus stressing and emphasizing it. This is the case in this particular advertisement.

Fig 1

The anchorage text is place in the bottom left hand corner, written in black apart from the Windows Logo, while above, the images are strong in colour. The colour used to represent the headphones, wires, stars, etc. are those of the Microsoft Windows XP logo: red, blue, yellow and green. The strong and intense colours on the white background means the image is in low in modality. The more saturated colours - the lower the modality. The white background also insinuates it is decontextualized. If the background would have been full of details it would have been contextualized.

The young woman is a photography which is a representation of reality and is normally high modality. In this image one could argue that even though the young

woman is high modality, the image as a whole is low modality due to the strong colours and the use of a decontextualized background. Also there is almost no depth in the image. The company's commodity is placed in the middle vertical line also putting emphasis on it. As shown on the diagram above there is also a form of triangle in the image. When placing a triangle in an image it can also indicate action and conflict. If the triangle is pointed is also adds movement which in this image helps along the idea of the music "exploding" from the woman's heart.

When an image is placed on the left hand side, it is not only being emphasized but it also makes it stand out and add a sense of depth to the image. On an iconographic level the different objects combined and the anchorage placed in the left hand corner along with the company's commodity, the windows logo, indicates that by purchasing this specific product, the consumer will be full of potential and there is no limit to what you can create.

The text written in the left hand corner reads: Start something Sonic. Start discovering new music. Collecting the old stuff. Start recording your own. Mixing and mashing. Taking it on the road. Start creating your personal soundtrack. Windows XP. The title has been written in two types of fonts; a standard computer and a more posh, womanlike type of handwriting. The letter s in sonic is also written like a treble clef, a symbol used in music writing. The subsequent text in a third and different font: that of a child's writing. What they are trying to achieve with this, is to show that this is a product