Post #5: Beauty Magazine Ads

November 13, 2007 eunkyungan

Most women are always trying to look younger and have beautiful skin complexions. Even dating way back to the 1920’s we can see by the advertisements that women back than were also very concerned with facial aging and wanted to look younger. Nowadays when flipping through a magazine for women there are tons of advertisements on facial creams to make women look younger and have beautiful skin. Comparing a 1928 Vogue magazine advertisement on an essential cream for women faces titled “…Pretty faces may still be hungry faces” and an advertisement in a 2005 Instyle magazine on an anti-wrinkle firming cream by Chanel, there are some differences and similarities.

The first thing difference I notice is that this advertisement has less text than the 1928 advertisement where it has way too much information about this product. I feel that this modern advertisement is more appealing because of the less text used. However, I understand why they had to use so much text in the 1928. It is probably because there was no internet back, so they cannot just put a website on the advertisement to learn more about the product like this modern advertisement does. Also throughout the text the use of hierarchy in the text makes it easier to point out the most important facts about this product without reading everything whereas in the 1928 advertisement there is not much text hierarchy in which and you have to read everything.

Unlike the modern advertisement, this 1928 magazine advertisement uses an illustrative image. This photographic image used in the modern advertisement makes the product look more real which gives real results. The illustrative image in the 1928 advertisement makes the product look kind of fake and is not as convincing as the photographic image.

It is obvious in both the advertisements that the facial cream is the main focus. However, they both take a different approach in advertising it. In the 1928 advertisement they have placed the jar of essential cream at the spotlight with a women looking from the side at it giving more emphasizes on the actual cream rather than showing the results of using this product. In the modern advertisement the jar of cream is the only thing that has color which makes it stand out and the right half is a confident woman’s face looking out at you. This advertisement is more concerned with the results of using this product saying that you can be confident and beautiful like this woman because you can have this young and wrinkle free face if you use this product.

Visually the only similarities that I notice in both of these advertisements are that they both have a large jar of cream and an image of a beautiful woman with text. Otherwise, the layouts of these advertisements are very different. The 1928 advertisement has a very strong diagonal composition and with the amount of text at the bottom it seems more like an article rather than an advertisement. The modern advertisement has a very center composition with very little text and image dominant which looks like most nowadays facial cream and beauty product advertisements.

In both of these advertisements, it is clear in what they are trying to sell, but the approach in how to advertise the product has changed over the many years. In the 1928 advertisement they were more concerned in the product itself with a lot of detailed information. Nowadays we are more concerned showing the results in using the product with a photographic image of a flawless woman and just a little bit of text with the most important facts about the product.

Pretty faces may still be hungry faces 1928 Vogue Ad

Modern Ad 2005 Instyle