My ancillary product poster can be interpreted in many ways by an audience; however I feel that I have conveyed by desired meaning successfully and have led my audience to interpret the poster in an effective and correct way through the use of signs, a discrete unit of meaning. In my poster both the text and images are signs.
John Fiske’s theory (1982) ‘denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed’ applies specifically to my work and it is the connotations that have allowed me to create the correct meaning. The poster denotes a young girl posing confidently for a picture and her name is clearly centred horizontally across the page. The background is white, with a dull tone to it that is slowly being uncovered by a light from the top left hand corner. Also her clothing links directly with the text colour following the three colour scheme pallet. I feel that by incorporating all these denotes together allows the audience to then connote a lot more about the artist. For example the studio connotes professionalism, perhaps suggesting the artist is successful to have had a professional photo taken. As she is the main focus in the layout of the poster it suggests that she is important and popular. The burnt orange, gold and black colours could connote a hip hop/dance genre as they follow the stereotypical constructions of hip hop posters by being bold and bright. In turn, this with her confident pose again fits with the hip hop/dance genre and suggests aspects of her personality as well as her music. However in terms of mise en scene, her clothing portrays the artist as quite the fashionista as they are up to date and admirable as her clothes could suit a models outfit for a clothes advert. This again portrays different aspects of her personality. Aside from this the colours of them are still associated with the negotiated meaning of hip hop/dance. This mix suggests the artist’s character is slightly different than those stereotypical interpretations of a hip hop/dance character, suggesting that her style of music may too, reflect this and in turn this helps to reach a much wider audience. Also the light in the top left hand corner of the poster perhaps connotes the idea of being on stage, in the lights, performing, raising the question of whether she’s touring soon. It also may reflect that she’s something special and upcoming and is currently moving forward which creates the feeling of excitement. The artist’s body language is confident, but the smile makes her more likeable and welcoming as the audience don’t feel intimidated by her ‘star image’ that’s been created.
Considering anchorage, the chosen words construct specific meanings and I purposely chose them to communicate the main points of the poster. The word ‘Animal’ denotes a mammal; however it is also the name of the album and this is made clear to the audience as the artist’s name is placed underneath which follows an audience’s cultural knowledge of music posters layouts. As well as this it also connotes the style of character that the artist is and also the approach of her choice of music. Each exclamatory sentence on the left hand side connotes positive aspects of Eve’s character and music which again leads the audience to believe she is successful. Nothing on my poster actual says to the audience ‘This is a music artist’, it is in fact, the connotations the audience retrieves from the words on the page that tell the audience that she is. The list of music magazines, the album name and the record company all connote that she is a music artist. Additionally on the bottom left hand corner of the poster there is an apple which denotes merely that object; however our cultural and social knowledge of popular brand name ‘apple’ and ‘iTunes’ allow us to make cross links and be lead to understand it’s a music advertisement. All the words I have included on the poster have ideological meanings in its connotations and this has allowed me to successfully portray the correct meanings to the audience. As an example the colours orange, gold and grey could connote many other things and are polysemic; however due to our developed and agreed language culture with the specific words on the page allow the audience to make a judgement that the genre is hip hop/dance.
Considering Stuart Hall, ‘texts can be encoded by producers and meaning is decoded by audiences’, I feel this theory applies to my work as I have aimed to lead the audience to understand my intended meanings. However the way the audience decodes my text may differ despite my attempts to make the decodes specific and lead the audience. In some cases my intended decodes may overall be unsuccessful as it is each individuals own opinion and perspective that they create of the poster that make them decide whether they like the artist or not.
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