Throughout all forms of literature and entertainment, visual texts are often used to convey important messages through pictures, drawings, or film, rather than through words. Although some visual texts include actual words, the visual aspects that appear within the text are what hold the most meaning. By taking note of various elements and techniques used in a visual text, the reader is able to interpret meaning from the picture and analyze the rest of the text in a way that creates depth and detail. Although visual texts come in all different forms such as comics and music videos, I chose to focus on an advertisement. The Drummond Sweaters advertisement that I chose to analyze mostly uses perspective, text, symbols, and icons to present its message to the audience. In advertisements, especially, it is extremely vital to catch the viewer’s attention and the elements used in this ad most definitely help to accomplish that. 

This advertisement for Drummond Sweaters is very obviously aimed at a male audience. Besides the brand name, the very first line of the ad is what draws the most attention because its font size is much larger than the rest of the text. It is also guaranteed to capture the most attention because of the message itself – “Men are better than women!” This message, along with the rest of the visual text, clearly belittles women by making them seem useless in any place other than “indoors”. So although women wouldn’t really be drawn to this ad or to the company, men would definitely be interested in knowing more. 

The company presents this ad in a way that shows men as the main focus. There is only the one woman seen on the bottom who is attempting to climb up the cliff in order to get to the two men. By doing this, the sweater company is trying to show that their product makes men more desirable and when men see this, they will want to wear the sweaters, too. The strategic placement of the two men above the woman also might represent power or dominance over the woman, contributing to reoccurring theme of sexism in this ad. It can also be noticed that the two men are sharing a certain gaze and are more focused on one another, rather than the woman in the picture. It seems as though they don’t really care about trying to get her attention because they don’t feel that they need to. This aspect of the ad contributes to the power of the sweater because it attempts to show that the sweater does all the work for you. 

Overall, I think this ad was most likely successful. It does a good job of getting the point across of the sweater being able to capture a woman’s attention. However, I don’t think it was necessary for the company to put down women in the way that it did. This ad basically presents woman as being “a drag” or even a burden for men. It was never uncommon for old advertisements to contain ideas of sexism to get their point across, so being that this is an old- fashioned ad, it might have been okay to advertise things like this back then. However, this advertisement would be quite the controversy in today’s society. This is mainly because it depicts serious gender roles. Gender equality is much more prevalent now than it was during the time this ad was produced, and for a good reason. Sometimes people think that feminism is just a way to pit females and males against each other, but it’s more than that. It’s about both genders receiving the same respect and opportunities, which is a much more common thought now than it was fifty years ago. Therefore, it is doubtful that an ad like this would last very long in today’s society. 

Interpreting visual texts can sometimes be challenging because the message isn’t always straightforward. All aspects of the work must be evaluated and taken into deep consideration in order to really understand all of the implications that the visual text has to offer. In advertisements like this Drummond Sweaters one, the message is made abundantly clear that men will be desirable if they wear a Drummond sweater. However, just like all visual texts, including this one, there can be multiple messages that accompany the main one, so it is always important to thoroughly analyze and explore all elements of a visual text. 