Redesign of Advertisement Essay Reflection

Alex Hatala
WRT 150

Mrs. Rinke

11/2/12

Reflection Essay

            When thinking about finding an advertisement and how I would design in, I felt out of my comfort zone when keeping in mind all of the guidelines that this paper had to have. Going into this assignment was challenging because it was something that I've never had to do before. It was a rather lengthy assignment with the use of rhetorical appeals that I wasn't confident in defining in my paper. I knew that this was going to be an essay that I absolutely could not wait until the last minute to do so I made sure to create an outline of everything that I had to include in it and got started right away. As I began to write a few main points of what I was going to include in my paper, I soon realized that this assignment wasn't as bad as I originally intended it to be.

Finding an advertisement was the easy part for me. I spent some time reading through magazines and paying close attention to all of the advertisements until I came across a David’s Bridal advertisement. I tried picking out the flaws that the advertisement had and soon realized exactly how I was going to redesign it and what angle I would take on it to get my main point across. I wasn't looking for any advertisement in particular but I knew I wanted to find a simple one and figure out what I wanted to do with it and write about it. I wanted to find an advertisement geared towards teenagers and older women. I knew that I would have a better chance to figure out what to write about and how I would redesign it to appeal to a different audience.

When it came time to think about how I wanted to redesign my advertisement, it was easy for me to picture it in my mind. I picked a somewhat general topic of talking about the body image of women in today’s society; the definition of skinny and what everyone considers “fat”. My topic of discussion was also something that I related to because I have my own opinions about how society looks at women and men alike and knew that this topic would a good one to write about. I thought about changing the general audience to appeal to men but since my advertisement was geared towards tall, young, skinny models, it occurred to me that it didn't give a good representation of the body size of all women in society. It made me think about how many young teenage girls view that advertisement in a negative light that makes them think badly about their body. It’s important to make an advertisement that equally appeals to a diverse audience which is what I decided to do in my essay.

As I began writing my essay, I faced quite a few challenges. I struggled with figuring out how I should start and end my essay and what I should incorporate in my body paragraphs. I was looking forward to the peer review of our essays in class so that I was able to find what I had missed while writing my rough draft and what information I still needed to include. There were a lot of things that needed to be talked about in this essay and I was mainly worried about not including them in it. I was also mainly worried about the length requirement because I felt like it was a stretch to even get to 5 pages. Organization was another big thing that I had trouble with because I felt like I had too much information that was scattered and not thought out very well. I overcame these challenges by making sure to read over the guidelines multiple times and write a paragraph that corresponded to each of the points. I took everything that my partner told me that I needed to include in my paper as well as helpful hints and applied it to my final draft which helped take some of the stress off of my shoulders.

What I liked most about this assignment was the fact that we got to pick an advertisement of our choosing instead of having one picked for us. I also felt like I learned a lot about the rhetorical appeals and how they are applied in advertisements. I am one to never pay actual attention to advertisements when flipping through a magazine. It was very interesting to find out that so much thought actually goes into an advertisement and that they aren't just slipped into magazines for no point at all. They capture ethos, logos, and pathos and we aren't even aware of them because we’re either just glancing at them or only focusing on the picture. I will use these likes to my advantage because I actually take the time to look at everything that is on an advertisement instead of reading right over it. It’s interesting to identify the general audience of that advertisement and how they make people want to buy their product.

The learning outcomes that I have walked away with were those of being able to define rhetorical appeals and knowing how to look for them and how to incorporate them in current and future essays as well. I only vaguely remember learning these rhetorical appeals a few years ago and having to use them in a paper helped commit them to memory more easily. Committing these appeals to memory is important for me because I know I’m going to need them in the future and continually writing papers with these appeals should help in strengthening that. I also feel that I've learned how to be a better judge of character when focusing on how advertisements appeal to a general audience even if I may not agree with how they capture a wide range of people in today’s society. I feel that I have a clear understanding now of how to look for ethos, logos, and pathos in anything and knowing these appeals are good for a lot of things in life.
                If I were to get a second chance at writing this essay, I would spend more time figuring out the rhetorical appeals in my advertisement. I felt like I went out on a limb to try to think of how these appeals would be put into my essay and it was hard to find ethos, logos, and pathos in the original advertisement as well as in the redesign. I know that my explanations as to how these appeals were in both advertisements weren't well thought out and I know that’s going to bring down my overall grade on this essay. I would also make sure to spend more time brainstorming everything that I would include in my paper as well as actually writing my paper in regards to the deadlines. Finding a different advertisement would have also benefited me since I didn't spend a lot of time looking through magazines and picking out an advertisement that I could use to write this essay.