Does anyone know which corporate image design uses advertising photography?

Abstract: Advertising photography is a graphic photography art with the purpose of conveying advertising information and serving commercial activities. Its function mainly lies in beautifying goods and strengthening the theme of advertisements from the perspective of visual aesthetics. It has certain aesthetic value, but the specific utilitarian tendency is the professional feature of advertising photography, and "attracting attention" is the fundamental principle of its communication effect. This principle also stipulates the design of newspaper advertising photography.

Advertising photography is essentially a practical art, which is different from general artistic photography. This paper mainly uses the methods of comparative hermeneutics and reception aesthetics to distinguish the boundary between them, so as to clarify people's cognitive deviation and correct the guiding ideology of modern newspaper advertising photography design.

In modern print advertisements, pictures occupy more and more space. Since the 1920s, the text content in print advertisements has been relegated to a secondary position, and the layout space is dominated by paintings and images, and it is rapidly developing towards the trend of focusing on images. According to the survey, since the 1980s, more than 90% of the pictures of printed advertisements have been photographed, and advertising photography has almost become synonymous with modern printed advertising works.

The reason why advertising photography is favored by advertisers and widely used is not only related to the intuitive and clear information transmission characteristics of the photos themselves, but more importantly, its unique function of "strengthening the theme and beautifying the goods". Advertising photography is to visualize the advertising theme in an intuitive image form.

This function of advertising photography makes the difference between it and news photography obvious. However, many people confuse advertising photography with artistic photography in newspapers and periodicals. When evaluating or designing an advertising photographic work, people often copy the standards of artistic photographic works. This is a wrong tendency. Therefore, clarifying the boundaries between advertising photography and pure artistic photography, investigating their structures and functions in their respective value systems, and summarizing the effectiveness principles of advertising photography can not only clarify people's cognitive deviations, but also correct the guiding ideology of advertising design and do a good job in modern newspaper advertising design.

one

The function of advertising photography mainly lies in beautifying goods and strengthening the theme of advertising from the perspective of visual aesthetics. This is the theoretical basis for people to examine advertising photography from an aesthetic point of view. It should be said that a good advertising photography really contains aesthetic principles and artistic laws, which can give people a strong visual impact with its unique figurative form. However, with the deepening of aesthetics, we find that the imagination is unconsciously pulled and dragged, and the final image does not show the intoxicating aesthetic world like ordinary works of art. Advertising photography is an "ark of leaves" carefully created by advertisers, which narrows the distance between viewers and advertising themes. Therefore, the functional difference between advertising photography and general art photography is highlighted in the chain of aesthetic psychological activities.

According to reception aesthetics, the process of appreciation can be roughly divided into three stages: receiving information, understanding information and feeding back information. This is actually a psychological process in which the subject takes aesthetic photos of the object. People's acceptance and appreciation of advertising photography basically follows this psychological process.

Attention is the key to information reception. In modern society, people face a lot of information every day, and only advertising information is overwhelming, which makes people dizzying. How many advertisements have you actually seen or heard? In this regard, American psychologist A Raymond and others have done research. They asked the subjects to hold a counter and press it every time they saw or heard an advertisement. The statistical results show that the average number of audio-visual advertisements of adult subjects in a working day is only 76. Most advertisements are ignored because no one pays attention. Bernbach, a famous advertiser, once said, "You are not attractive to let people see your advertisement, so no matter what you say in the advertisement, you are wasting money." This sentence directly explains the meaning of "attracting people's attention" in advertisements. It can be seen that how to increase the attractiveness of advertising and attract the attention of the audience has become the primary topic of advertising creation at present.

In their book Advertising and Management, J.R. Roster and L.Pace, famous American scholars, once regarded "using as large illustrations as possible (including photography, illustrations and charts)" as a principle of print advertising creation, and thought that advertising photography was the primary factor to attract print advertising readers. This is undoubtedly correct. Modern society is becoming a "visual society" more and more, and visual visualization is becoming more and more prominent. Daniel bell, an American culturist, clearly pointed out in his book The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism: "In my opinion, contemporary culture is becoming a visual culture, not a printing culture." It is obviously an inevitable trend to give full play to the advantages of visual "viewing". In this rapidly developing society, pictures can transform information that can only be described in words into visual information, and the information is straightforward. Therefore, it can form a direct visual stimulus and is easily accepted by the audience quickly. Advertising photography, because of its strong expressive force and free sculpture, gives people a stronger visual impact and forms a strong visual stimulus. This can not only attract people's attention, but also arouse people's strong interest in viewing.

Strong visual stimuli arouse people's interest in watching, but whether this interest can be maintained depends on whether the content of the work meets the audience's "psychological expectations". In recent years, people's psychological needs for advertising have changed greatly. The richness of material life has changed people's values. What people want is to enrich their lives. Therefore, in the face of advertising, the audience not only has the demand of obtaining commodity information, but also forms and grows spiritual-aesthetic demand. "In recent years, the visual part of American advertising has gradually shifted from commercial art to aesthetic art ... More and more creativity dares to make such an attempt and get unexpected results." "From a purely aesthetic point of view, dramatic skills with shocking power are becoming more and more popular." ② At home, some well-known scholars have pointed out that "TV advertisements in the United States and China in recent two years have attached great importance to the aesthetic expression of creativity." As can be seen from the above, aesthetics is gradually becoming the main "expectation horizon" of the audience. Therefore, a good advertising photography work must first be a "beautiful" work, which must meet the aesthetic expectations of the audience.

When the audience tries to understand the aura of beauty in aesthetic expectation, it means that appreciation has entered the second stage. At present, in form, modern advertising photography, like modern photography art, gives viewers a strong visual pleasure and intuitive image beauty with its concise and intuitive artistic language and strong sense of form composition.

The final stage of the psychological process of aesthetic photography should be a kind of "spiritual transcendence" As an art, the function of photography is only to make people appreciate and get spiritual satisfaction. What the appreciator finally achieves is a state of "Yue Zhi Yue Shen". However, advertising photography is essentially a practical art, and as far as its unchangeable purpose is concerned, advertising photography is just a more hidden and effective intuitive language. Aesthetics is only its means, and its ultimate goal is to render the theme of advertising.

Generally speaking, artistic photography has no obvious practical and utilitarian goals. It is not created for a certain group of people, nor should it be subordinate to a specific propaganda goal. Advertising photography not only has a deliberate pursuit of market goals, that is, for the target market and target users, but also has a clear publicity goal. Publicity objectives include the shaping of corporate image, the display of corporate purpose and management policy, the key explanation of commodities, and the creation of poetic scenes to induce purchases. As far as an advertisement is concerned, it can highlight one kind or combine many kinds, but its propaganda goal is very clear and specific.

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Compared with other expressions such as painting or writing, advertising photography has its unique functions, such as its excellent recording ability, which can record the object completely and truly. The image in a photographic photo is basically a true record of objective things, which is very similar to the objective image felt by the naked eye. It can make people feel that the image in the photo is the real thing, giving people a high degree of authenticity and credibility, so that even the processed and beautified image still makes people feel that the image is a true and natural portrayal. Therefore, it is very convincing, which is in line with the saying that "seeing is believing". This is probably the reason why photography replaces illustration in the first place in advertising expression. However, from the discussion of the audience's aesthetic psychological activities in the last article, we can see that the effective point of advertising photography communication is not here, and we believe that "attracting attention" is the main effective principle of advertising photography.

"Attract attention" should have two meanings. First of all, as far as advertising photography itself is concerned, first, it arouses the interest of men, women and children in photography with its strong visual expression. For example, the "brake trace" of a Mercedes-Benz sports car that won the highest honor in print advertising at the 44th Cannes International Advertising Festival is a classic case of advertising photography: a silver-white Mercedes-Benz sports car is parked in the shadow of the roadside, and many brake traces can be clearly seen on the asphalt road next to it. From this simple and seemingly static picture, the viewer can almost hear the screams of tires when the vehicle braked suddenly and the exclamations of passers-by on Mercedes-Benz. The strong visual effect of photography is beyond the reach of accurate numbers or words. In addition to the various performance effects created by traditional photography and darkroom technology, the application of many emerging technologies has greatly expanded the performance ability of advertising photography, making it far beyond the visual range of human eyes and making many things that were originally thought to be more abstract concrete and credible. For example, high-speed photography can record the instantaneous state that the naked eye can't see clearly in thousands or even tens of thousands of seconds; Using infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray and other non-visible photography technologies, we can show images that are impossible for the naked eye to see; Especially the application of modern digital imaging technology in the field of photography has greatly improved the expressive ability of photography. Photographic images can be arbitrarily combined, deformed, edited and copied according to the design intention ... The freedom of image application has been promoted to an unprecedented height, making it possible and easy to express some abstract concepts with images. The application of laser holography technology in advertising window display breaks through the limitation of two-dimensional plane of photographic images and can create three-dimensional images with spatial dimensions. Secondly, with its unique cultural consciousness, it eliminates the reading obstacles of people of different cultural levels. From the cognitive point of view, photographic images are very close to the objective truth, and the visual information without coding is an "international language", which is easy for people without special education or training to identify and understand, and people who use different languages and languages and ethnic groups with different cultural backgrounds can understand without translation. A picture of an advertising photo can convey the same information to people all over the world, regardless of the nationality of the photographer and the era of shooting. For example, the American Training Committee for Liquid Milk Processors hung the iconic "milk moustache" on the lips of the magic master david copperfield in a dairy advertisement photography, and the theme of "milk fragrance stays forever" can be understood by any photo viewer. Therefore, when advertising photography promotes goods or commercial service projects, there are few obstacles to information exchange, and there are almost no geographical, ethnic and time restrictions, so it can receive particularly "eye-catching" artistic effects.

Secondly, as far as an advertising work is concerned, this whole involves photography and copywriting. Attention should be paid to the role of these two parts in the system. David ogilvy, an American advertising master, once said, "The more stories are injected into the picture, the more people will read your advertisement." Here, photography is only a formal factor, and the realization of its value ultimately depends on the audience's attention to advertising copy. Copywriting is the main body of advertising and the hinge that determines the success or failure of advertising. Photography, on the other hand, is subordinate to copywriting, which is a kind of visual decoration for copywriting content and a kind of pull and traction for the audience's attention. Photographic pictures can prompt some contents of the advertising copy, arouse certain suspense or interest, and form various vivid visual effects with visual elements such as colors, lines and shapes on the pictures, so as to induce readers to read the advertising copy and further understand the advertising content.

three

Advertising photography itself should give people a pleasing aesthetic feeling, but its main purpose is to attract people to pay more attention to its subordinate copywriting and themes. This basic premise stipulates the design of advertising photography. In addition, advertising photography is the product of technology, and the design of advertising photography must meet specific technical requirements. Because advertising photography works need to be used in different media eventually, and different media have different production procedures and technical characteristics, therefore, the technical requirements, that is, the design should fully consider the requirements of adapting to the media. This means that the function and effectiveness principle of advertising photography are generally effective, but the design of advertising photography is specific and personalized, and it must be designed according to the characteristics of different printing media in order to achieve the ideal effect. As a kind of paper media with low reducibility in print media, the design of newspaper advertising photography is relatively limited and difficult, so its design features are more distinct and clear:

1. Free form. Newspaper advertising photography enjoys full freedom of artistic expression. In advertising works, various art forms-painting, sculpture, etc. Can be used according to the principle of effectiveness, so that a variety of different art types can be organically combined in the picture.

This formal freedom is basically the transmission and guidance of the audience's vision. To achieve this effect, newspaper advertising photography should use more flexible methods such as manipulation, supplement, design and replacement to turn the real scene into a virtual scene, thus forming a "spirit-like" picture. General portrait photography emphasizes "typical environment", strives to have both form and spirit, and conveys the "typical character" of the characters. Advertising portraits are not about the performance of characters, but about how portraits can better express the theme of advertisements. For example, a foreign newspaper advertising photography, a fresh apple on the screen turned into a beautiful girl's rosy face. The sweet smell of apples is integrated with the girl's health, attracting a bee to fall on it, accompanied by a concise advertising slogan: one a day, healthy and happy. This advertising photography organically combines health, girls and apples: "Girls' faces are like apples", "Apples are as lovely as girls' faces" and "Apples make people healthy, and girls are symbols of bodybuilding". Readers are associated with things and people, people and things, thus leaving a deep impression on the nutrition of apples, the theme of advertisements. In news photography, it is not allowed to conjure up a girl's face in an apple, which is incredible in artistic portrait photography. The same model, because of the different products it promotes, can also be treated as a multi-faceted beauty-cosmetic advertisements to highlight the beauty of her hair; Jewelry shows the beauty of its neck and hands. Neither "typical environment" nor "typical personality" is required, and "lifelike appearance" is not required. You can even make special processing and computer synthesis on the photographed negatives, so that they can have the expressive force of painting.

2. The stipulation of content. Advertising photography is basically a commissioned business and an integral part of the overall advertising marketing activities. It must meet the needs of the overall activities and serve the overall marketing activities. Advertising photography itself is also a kind of commercial behavior, and the process of advertising photography is a process of management and production, which is closely linked with the market and commodity circulation and is a commercial art.

The content of newspaper advertising photography is bound by mandatory regulations. The stipulation of content is determined by its unique function and purpose. Functionally, it must be the beautification of goods, the pursuit of the aesthetic effect of decorative forms of goods-the treatment of light, the collocation of colors and the embellishment of decorative ornaments are all set up to create a beautiful atmosphere. On the target, it is completely subordinate to the advertising theme. The choice of materials and the absorption of ideas must be subordinated to specific business purposes.

According to the above design principles, the communication effect of newspaper advertising photography will inevitably form two different levels. One is superficial image concern, and the other is deep artistic attraction. Image comes directly from the construction of various formal beauty factors such as color, line and picture, which attracts the audience's attention to advertising pictures. Artistic conception is not in the picture in which the image has been specifically described, but in the metaphor, symbol and implication described in the advertising image. It is the artistic conception that attracts the audience's attention to the theme of the advertisement.

Judging from the inherent requirements of artistic conception, we must first pay attention to two points: First, there is only the image of "talking about things" and there is no deep meaning pinned on it. This kind of photography has no artistic conception. Second, although there is profound meaning, but the picture mining is not enough, I went straight to Chen Youyu, with no connotation and still no artistic conception. Only by pointing out what is behind the tangible concrete image can the appreciator be induced to arouse his imagination and feel "charm". This artistic conception is the propaganda of the material value or economic value of a specific advertising object. Therefore, the relationship between newspaper advertising photography and audience is a relationship of "production and consumption".

(The author is deputy director of the Department of Journalism, Anhui Normal University)

Precautions:

① Huang Heshui: Advertising Psychology, p. 178, Oriental Publishing Center 1998 1 1 edition.

② Newspaper Advertisement Abstracts, No.3, 199 1.

③ Wang Shide: Business Culture and Advertising Aesthetics, p. 235, China Economic Publishing House, February 1996.