Scott Supple
October 29, 2010
Writing 101
Professor Williams
The Shape of Time
There are three important parts to any effective print advertisement; the visual, the
headline, and the copy. Each of these components plays a key role in the advertiser getting
their message across to the audience. When one thinks of a print advertisement the first thing
that comes to mind is most likely and ad in a magazine, a poster, or a billboard, however a CD
case acts much like a print advertisement. If a consumer is browsing through a rack at F.Y.E.
the only thing they are going to see is the front and back cover of the casing. The title of the CD
is essentially the headline, the design on the front and back cover act as the visual act as the
visual aspect and the copy is represented by the song titles, liner notes and lyrics to the music.
The goal of the visual and the headline is essentially the same, to capture the attention of the
audience and pull them into the advertisement. Comparably to the Title of an album and the
design of the cover which are designed to entice one to purchase a CD. In my Culture, Society
and Me project; I designed a CD cover for a mock album that I entitled “The Shape of Time”.
This album was intended to show how different elements of my life shaped me into who I am.
I feel that my visuals and headline would be a success if I were actually trying to attract
buyers. I feel the design of the front and back covers are creative enough that they would
capture the eye of the consumer. Along with grabbing the reader’s attention they directly
correspond with the message of the album: It is not our possessions that shape us into the
people we are, it is the social interaction with those around us, and how we use our time with
the materials we are given that defines who we become. On the front cover is an old clock
however it is melting and demented to show that with the passage of time comes dramatic
change. On the back cover is a digital clock, reading the same time as the clock on the front
cover, this is shows how much time has resulted in an almost complete transformation. The
digital clock is also clearly beginning to melt away, this is because even after time has
transformed us, it continues to change us throughout our life time. The profound message
incorporated with an eye catching design would surely capture the buyer’s interest.
The next element of my CD project is the copy, the context within the CD that carries
the intended message. In my project the copy is represented by the names of the tracks on the
back cover, the four track descriptions and the short authors note. The names of the track
shown on the back cover also tie in with the time theme, and are set up chronologically in
terms of the time the story took place and the physical names of the tracks. Each track refers
to a time during my high school career that was significant to me and shaped my lifestyle in
some way. I then chose what I thought to be the four most important tracks and explained
them in further detail in the liner notes. The descriptions give more detail to the audience in
order to explain my message then the titles of the tracks do by themselves.
I am confident that my project gets the intended message across clearly, however it is
far from perfect and there a few changes I would make if I were to revise it. I am pleased with
the covers, the names of the tracks, the thesis, and the authors note, therefore my revisions
would be almost entirely in the liner notes of my project that describe the tracks more
thoroughly. Rather than choose four tracks and write a full length paragraph about each, I
would give a shorter description of each song that would simply be two or three sentences
long. Each track is important to the story and the thesis, and I believe the viewer could possibly
get lost at certain points because the story must be told chronologically and when things get
left out it becomes much more difficult to comprehend.
When I first read through the rubric of this project I thought it was going to be terrible. I
couldn’t think of anything that I thought was important enough to shape my personality. But
when I began to brainstorm by writing down groups that I was a part of, I realized what
socialized me and developed my lifestyle the most, the time that I had spent with people
around me and the different ways that I spent my time. I realized, material things don’t
transform us; everyday encounters with one another, memories of times past, the good or the
bad, and our goals for the future are the things that make us do the things we do, say what we
say and become who we have become.
