Typological Approach to Visual Metaphor in Commercial Advertising (Case Study: Instagram Network)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1  Associate professor, Department of Visual Communication, Faculty of Art, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran.

2   PhD Studentof Art Research, Department of Art Research, Faculty of Art, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

 Commercial advertising in the environment of social networks is an important basis in attracting the audience, current customers as well as potential customers, via visual
communication. In such advertising, it is required to recognize visual metaphors according to structural and meaning
patterns. Academic studies of this type of metaphor have often focused on the literary aspect, but the typology of Phillips and McQuarrie examines the visual elements involved
in creating such metaphors.
The research question follows the typological and qualitative analysis of visual metaphor by adopting descriptiveanalytical method to find out visual structure and meaning
operating in metaphors used in Instagram advertisements.
Quantitative analysis also presents the distribution of
complexity and richness in a statistical sample consisting
of 24 Instagram advertisements where visual metaphor is
the main design device. Phillips and McQuarrie typology
consists of three distinct visual structures: juxtaposition,
fusion, and replacement, having an increasing complexity,
respectively. Meaning operation also includes three distinct
types of connection, comparison aimed similarity, and comparison aimed opposition, with an increasing in richness,
respectively.
Visual structure is about the physical arrangement of visual
elements while meaning operation is described in terms of
the instructions for inference they suggest. In juxtaposition,
two elements are juxtaposed side-by-side with the same
size. Fusion is a kind of representation that the two visual
elements are combined together and a new visual element is
resulted which includes some parts of both elements. As the
name shows, replacement is a situation which a visual element is absent and the other element is substituted instead.
Complexity and richness are defined by the way the audience interacts with the design and the increase of each one
requires more cognitive activity by the audience to perceive
the content. Richness of a visual metaphor refers to ambiguity, multiplicity, and polysemy. The results show that the
designers of commercial advertisements in Instagram social network have employed all three visual structures to
the same extent and the degree of complexity, and this issue
does not influence the use of the visual structure. On the
other hand, the amount of richness affects the number of
ads. The meaning operation of connection which presents
the lowest richness includes half of the samples. It means
that designers prefer lower richness. Comparison operations, similarity and opposition, are employed in other half
of the samples and the number of adds with opposition is
less than the number of ads with similarity operation. It is
concluded that the increase in richness is inversely proportional to the usage of meaning operation. Besides, the most
used type is the combination of replacement as the visual
structure, with connection as the meaning operation and it
reached around 21 percent of designs. The combination of
juxtaposition and connection is found in the second position
which is employed in 17 percent of samples. The least used
type is the combination of replacement as the visual structure with opposition as the meaning operation which is only
consists of around 4 percent of samples. 

Keywords

References

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Journal of Fine Arts: Visual Arts
Volume 27, Issue 2
August 2022
Pages 103-113

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