Graphology in print advertising : iconic functions

Abstract

Typography and layout are two powerful graphic tools in print advertising. They are used to arrest the attention of the target market by creating a positive association, a controversy or stimulate some kind of intellectual game. This means that much of the message has already been conveyed by creatively expanding and diversifying the conventional values embedded in certain graphic means and basing the advertisements on prevailing textual norms and our past experiences before the message itself has even been read, by just focusing on the typography used (e.g. compare the text layout and typography of a newspaper or a cell phone SMS). Based on a randomly selected South African dataset, aspects of the graphological options with their functional values will be described.