Contrast

iPod advertisement by Apple 

The early advertisements for the Apple iPod featured a successful and appealing way of using contrast in advertisement design. They all featured a dark silhouette of a dancer, a white apple iPod in his or her hand, against a contrasting colored background. The white of the iPod, signature white ear buds, and the white iPod logo all draw the viewers attention and make them immediately aware of the product that is advertised. The dancer silhouette provides a nice contrast and graphic image to go with the white iPod and the colored background. Other similar advertisements feature the dancer against a more psychedelic background, providing a visual metaphor for the sensation of listening to music. The faceless dancer allows the viewer to more easily imagine themselves as the dancer. The image and contrast along with the effectiveness of the simple "iPod" text all work together so nicely that no other text, slogan or product description is needed. This advertisement design by Apple is both simple yet memorable and brings to mind the simple and memorable designs of most apple products.

Shape-ups ad by Sketchers

The contrast in this ad for Sketchers "Shape-ups" shoes fails almost as much as their shoes fail to help a person lose weight. First, the contrast in the text sizes adds little to no visual hierarchy to the text. The text of the body paragraph is almost the same size as the text of the header adding little contrast and little attraction for the viewers eyes. The lack of difference in fonts does not help the situation either. The some of the white text is outlined with a purple border which actually makes the words blend in more with the purple background rather than stand out against it. The completely white bodies of text have no luck either and are almost completely unreadable, drowning in the intensity of the purple background. Also the lack in different font styles used does not establish a visual hierarchy either. All the text looks roughly the same adding little variety and little interesting features to this ad.