TOW #3- Visual Text

            As technology starts gaining popularity, the need to hold a book and flip through the pages is declining. When the iPad and Kindle surfaced so did a popular trend called eBooks. Now you can have a library of your favorite books wherever you go in one tiny device. Not only can you read your books from your mobile device, but now you can listen to them as well. Almost every book from classics to new releases can be found in audio form. A company called Penguin Group is one of the most popular providers of audiobooks.

Penguin Group released an ad campaign of seven ads. In each ad it is an image of a famous classical book. In each scene there’s a penguin, the icon for Penguin Group, acting as a boom pole operator camouflaged to look like it is apart of the scene. A boom pole operator is the person who holds the long pole with a microphone attached in order to record a better audio of the scene. The boom pole operator has the intention of portraying that listening to a Penguin Group audio book makes you feel like you are in the scene, apart of the action. In each image there are artistic differences to represent the context of the book, like the genre or time period the book was written. For example in the Frankenstein ad, the scene is surrounded with many pieces of intense technical equipment. The penguin has a piece of equipment across his body, unlike in other scenes, to contribute to the overall theme of the image. In the D-Day ad, the Penguin has on a helmet, just like the other soldiers. In the Alice and Wonderland ad, the microphone is wrapped in a leaf in order to blend in. The illustrator did not make the penguin a different color or bolder in order to stick out, they made the Penguin blend in in order to portray that the Penguin Group audio books sound like they were recorded straight from the actual scenes. Listening to them feels like you are actually physically in the event. Sometimes it is hard to identify where the penguin is. Mirroring that it is hard to identify if you’re listening or if you’re actually there.  

Also, there are seven different ads, each portraying a different book. The books include Frankenstein, Moby Dick, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Tales of the Greek Heroes, Don Quixote De La Mancha, and Dracula. The wide range of genres from fantasy to science fiction and nonfiction, helps the Penguin Group appeal to many different audiences. All of the books mentioned are classics. This could possibly be targeting an older audience. Most older people that like these classical books are not used to listening to audio book. Seeing these ads may open their minds to it. Overall, these ads clearly get their meaning across as well as showing great artwork.