OUGD401 - Study Task 3

The first image we looked at was the ‘Uncle Sam Range’ advertisement poster from 1876 by Schumacher & Ettlinger and the second was a British propaganda poster from the First World War by Savile Lumley in 1915.

This ‘Uncle Sam’ image is an American advertisement promoting a range of cookers by use of patriotism and western power. The first thing that hits you is the colour scheme: Red, white and blue have never hit you so hard before coming across this poster. Different tones of each colour are used for a variety of shades to make it blend in more with the atmosphere of the picture.

This poster is definitely promoting an idea to sell their product and that is the American dream. Highlighting this, we can see that the target audience is middle-class and lower class citizens in the United States, this is obvious because of the characterization within the image. All of the people are wealthy, it’s a family unit but also an aspect pushes this out a bit more – the impact of slavery. Having a slave back in the time of this image’s publication was a status symbol of wealth and power, which would clearly be admired by the middle/lower class. There are small details of this image which subliminally would make the audience feel proud of their country and feel as if buying this cooker would make an impact on their lifestyle.  The use of type is also a clear representation of its American theme.

Savile’s poster is iconic in war propaganda history. Using emotional persuasion, this poster has an objective of encouraging the rate of recruitment for the Great War, which works an absolute treat!

The characterization of this piece consists of two children and their father timed after the War had ended and supposedly won by the Brits. The daughter is sat on the father’s knee with what looks like a history book or story whilst interrogating the father on what he did in the war. The son is sat playing with little toy soldiers which throws in a practical idea of what they are discussing.

The most important part of this image is the father’s emotion. The story/feelings what his face is telling is of shame, emphasized by the typeface at the bottom of the poster displaying “ Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?” in a scripted font. The emphasis of “you” in this sentence engages the viewer and triggers an interaction with the image to think like the father in the poster.

Both of these iconic forms of propaganda are a real success in relation to their target audiences and the feelings they provoke. Which in mind are completely different: Schumacher’s poster promotes a feeling of patriotism and sells it’s product adding values of a better life and a more American way of living in positive feelings. Whilst Savile’s image uses persuasion and guilt to make people engage with and follow the poster’s description.