Blog #6: Logo's

Starbucks is one of America’s most popular coffee shops today with over 14,000 stores located in over 42 countries.  Starbucks is famous for their rich coffee, delicious Frappuccino’s and mouthwatering lattes.   Whenever you walk into a Starbucks location you immediately catch attention of the Starbucks famous logo. 

The Starbucks logo made itself as famous as the stores themselves.  A lot of people are often confused about what the figure in the middle of the circle is.  Some speculate that it is a normal human being, or some may think the figure is a mythical creature.  Those who guess mythical creature are correct! The figure in the middle is a siren from Greek mythology.  Historically, sirens lure and captivate men for their great looks and sensuous ways. To go along with that, the siren was half fish, half woman. 

So you may be saying to yourself, “Well if the siren is used to lure in men and captivate them…why is a siren being used on a Starbucks logo?” The answer to that question is that Starbucks used it not to lure in customers because of her sexual appeal, but because Starbucks wanted to show that their coffee was irresistibly good and people would want to come back time after time again.  The simple green,white and black colors used in this logo exhibit the calm nature that you feel when you walk into a Starbucks.  Their are plenty of comfortable couches with soothing music to relax to with a nice hot cup of coffee after a long day at work.  If the logo were hot pink and black however, Starbucks would not have the same atmosphere as they do now. 

Personally, this logo works for a lot of customers.  We can see this all around us, for example in New York City.  Almost everybody rushes into a Starbucks before they have to get to work because it is convenient and extremely satisfying.  This logo without a doubt communicates successfully with Starbucks mission and image.  When people think of Starbucks they think of the quality of drinks, the friendliness of the staff, and the excellence of the organization as a whole. 

Blog #5 SPE 370

For this blog post, Sony audio products are being advertised.  The trope being used in this advertisement is a metaphor.  In our class the definition of metaphor was "a device for seeing something in terms of something else".  Metaphorical advertisements are used to gear ones mind toward a certain topic or product.  In this case that product is the Sony headphones. 

As people look at this advertisement, they can clearly see that the rule of thirds is being used to shoot this photo.  The bright pink line with text, the headphone picture and the trademark "Sony" title are used to anchor the photo down.  This photo is also very balanced, in that the boy and the woman are of equal distance to each other.  There clearly is more emphasis one the little boy who is sitting behind the woman because he is kicking her seat, he is sitting in a very awkward position that catches audiences' eyes and the large megaphone to replace his head shifts peoples' attention. 

The tenor in this photo in the little boy and the vehicle in this photo is megaphone and the video games in the little boys hand signifying he is being extremely loud and obnoxious on this tight airplane.  The metaphor is very easy to see in this ad.  This ad is saying that even though we all know that planes are very tight and cramped, and it can get loud with kids playing video games and shouting with impatience, these Sony headphones will drain out any external sound possible.  Audiences can tell that these Sony headphones work good because people can look at the woman on the plane being annoyed by the little boy, yet she seems calm and relaxed because she has the headphones on.