UCSD Semiotic Concept in a Perfume Advertisement
Business Finance
Final Project
Over the course of our quarter together, we have looked at and analyzed many signs in the form of print advertisements as examples of complex systems of signification at work: the “Mammy” citrus fruit sign, for example, or the poster for Pall Mall cigarettes. For your final project, you are going to show your understanding of these systems of signification by developing your own print advertisement for an already existing object.
Rather than applying a semiotic analysis to someone else’s advertisement, you will be building your own advertisement from the ground up in order to demonstrate what a semiotic approach to representation makes possible. Your use of semiotics should be drawn largely from the second half of our course—that is, from the material in Chandler’s book after the midterm (i.e. Chapter 3 forward).
Although creating the advertisement is the centerpiece of the project, the goal of the project is to situate the advertisement within a larger framework that explains and justifies your choices and demonstrates your understanding of semiotics. In order to do this, you will produce a structured proposal that incorporates five distinct sections:
1) Introduction
2) Justification
3) Audience
4) The Final Advertisement
5) Reflection
Here is what each section of the proposal should contain:
1) Introduction (@ 300 words): Provide a detailed textual description and brief assessment of the object that could be used to explain it to anyone. It should be meaningful to someone who is unfamiliar with it, or someone who is visually impaired, or someone who is not from your community or have your cultural background. A good Introduction will set the tone for the sections that follow.
2) Justification (@ 300 words): Provide a solid, thorough discussion of and justification for the semiotic concepts that inform your approach to creating an advertisement for this object. Consider the following questions (these are suggestive and not meant to be proscriptive): *What rhetorical devices are you using to create your advertisement, and why? How are you using them? To what end? *Which master tropes are you using to structure your advertisement, and how are you using them? *How are you engaging with concepts such as denotation and connotation? Literal and figurative language? Realism? Why and how are these important for your advertisement?
3) Audience (@ 300 words): Provide a detailed description of the audience or audiences for which the advertisement is intended and your what you are hoping your advertisement communicates to them. You might also consider: to what degree does your advertisement leave open possibilities of interpretation that you cannot account for or control for?
4) The Final Advertisement: This section is entirely up to you, but it should incorporate visual and textual information about your object and any other elements you believe will demonstrate the semiotic concepts you have chosen to put your advertisement together.
5) Reflection (@ 300 words): Provide a thoughtful, reflective statement about what you have learned from this course about semiotics, what has been the most useful and why, and how this knowledge has enabled you to put this advertisement together. How, for example, did creating this advertisement take you back to our very first discussions of the problems of representation
All completed projects should be approximately 1250-1500 words (not including endnotes/bibliography), typed, double-spaced, and using no larger than 12-point font. Quotations from Chandler or any other sources must use citations in the appropriate format. Any relevant images or audio/visual materials should be inserted (as jpegs or as hyperlinks to online clips) into your final document.
