Monday, November 8, 2010

"Word and image" practical example - Times magazine

Every week, Times magazine tries to use different gimmick to create their book covers.  The reason of why they need to exhaust all mental efforts to do it, it is certainly for attracting audiences to find out the topic of that week.  To make a successful book cover, Times magazine is skillfully on using “word and image” distinct their topic.  Like the cover on April 9th of this year, they used a penguin that is standing on a peak of snowfield as the image and with the theme “The Global Warming Survival Guide” beneath the penguin.  When I saw this amusing composition, my first impression is that penguin maybe really is the one who very want to know this survival guide.  Also, there are some small words “51 things you can do to make a difference” to arouse people’s curiousness what are the contents inside it.  

Another one also uses a very humorous idea to introduce the theme “how to save your Newspaper”.  This picture made me think that hawkers used newspapers to swipe and sold food in markets in the old days.  Is it inside the content?  Actually, the topic of that week talked about the crisis in journalism that has reached meltdown proportions.  Because many people in some major cities don't want to pay for newspapers.  But it doesn't mean that they have no necessity of reading newspapers.  In contrast, newspapers have more readers than ever.  However, people in nowadays can get news from online for free.  Who wants to pay for the publication that may not fit to charge for its content.


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