FINAL reflective practice essay

Reflective practice

This advertisement campaign shows a new way in which the fashion brand Topshop could promote the ranges of clothing, focusing on feelings rather than solely appearance. The design concept is heavily focused on pattern and colour to portray particular feelings rather than the commonly used ‘young, thin, white, and heterosexual’ models that can often leave the audience feeling dissatisfied about their own appearance.

The designs respond positively to the results of the ‘Groesz, Levine, and Murnen’s (2002) meta-analysis’. The meta-analysis revealed that ‘women are significantly more body dissatisfied after viewing thin-and-beautiful media images versus average-size, oversize, or nonbody images.’ In response to this finding, the design concepts for the Topshop clothing advertisements rely on the white space to frame the section of pattern and colour, rather than the actual clothes themselves. The ‘nonbody’ pattern was designed to have a colour scheme that worked to portray the feelings that may be associated to the particular style of clothing e.g. when wearing loungewear, you would expect to feel relaxed.

‘The Perfect Body’ advertisement by Victoria Secret uses a light coloured typeface across the centre of the advertisement to draw attention to the models’ bodies; insinuating that “physically attractive individuals are perceived by most to be socially more desirable”. The audience is likely to make comparisons and feel inadequate in comparison to the models wearing the underwear. ‘The Perfect Body’ advertisement informed the decision on where to place the type on the campaign visuals for Topshop. The analysis highlighted how powerful the placement of type can be when creating focal points within the image. The outcomes of the visual investigation show that the decision to place the typeface facing inwards to the section of colour works to make sure that it is the main focus of the advertisement. The placement of the type allows it to act as a frame around the pattern, ensuring that the concept of feeling being more important than image is made clear to the target audience and that the needs of the client (Topshop) is fulfilled. The target audience’s concentration is on the feeling that the particular style of clothing will provide rather than comparing themselves to the models, which do not often reflect the realities of the size 16 female body size in the UK.

Advertisements have a huge role within society, with the average person living in an urban area seeing up to 5000 ads per day. As designers, it is important to ensure that the content being shared cannot be interpreted in a negative way.  Carl Rodgers (1959) says that comparisons to others will be made so that the ideal self can be achieved. Exposure to the Victoria Secrets advertisement would mean that women would be seeing the “physically attractive individuals” and believing that they possess the “socially more desirable” body shape. In comparison to this, the proposed design treatment for this module ensures that the comparisons that are commonly made to existing fashion advertisements have not been included as part of the design.

The design treatment fulfils the client’s requirements of the development of something to ensure that the negative stigma of previous publications can be over seen and that the company can show that they are working on improving the way in which the clothes are advertised. Naomi Wolf says that women are made to feel as though they need to embody the characteristics of women presented in advertising so that they can be considered attractive to themselves and to others in society. The decision not to include any ‘young, thin, white, and heterosexual’ models is something in complete contrast to the Victoria Secrets campaign; but successfully fulfils the client’s requirements of removing focus away from anything that could suggest that there is a desired body shape.

The achievement of a modern aesthetic was deemed important for the Topshop advertising as it is a fashion brand that keeps up with current and upcoming fashion trends, so needs to be reflected in the design style. This aesthetic is obtained through the choice of layout; The most space is taken up by the coloured pattern to ensure that it is the main focus, and the image is left smaller. This ensures that the concept is understood and displayed in a way that it will be able to make an impact. The colour works to reflect the fashion trends, but the use of white space portrays a sense of class which shows that the clothing will be of a high quality, something the target audience were thought to expect. As previously discussed, the Victoria Secret poster uses text in a way determine which parts of the poster the audience will focus on. This is a technique that has been applied to the design of this advertisement proposal for the brand Topshop. The type is located along the edges of the patterns section, facing inwards so that it is shown to be describing the pattern and not the clothing. The typeface used matches the logotype of Topshop, improving the recognisability of the campaign and ensuring that the identity of Topshop is consistent throughout all of the design concepts.

To conclude, the visual investigation has shown that there are ways in which companies can improve the messages that advertisements are portraying. Simply changing the focus to something other than the models could improve the idea constructed by society that “physically attractive individuals are perceived by most to be socially more desirable’, emphasising that there is diversity in body sizes amongst women in the UK.