Semiotic Analysis of the "Come as You Are" McDonald's Campaign

Semiotics is the study of signs.  Signs are used in everywhere in our everyday life to relay information to us because we understand these signs subconsciously.  In advertisements, signs are use to relay ideas to us without directly informing the audience of the ideas.  The advertising campaign that I will be analyzing is he “Come as You Are” McDonald's campaign.  

Above is the first advertisement that I am discussing.  This advertisement shows 5 images of a man dressed in different styles with the “Come as You Are” text and McDonald’s logo in the bottom right corner.  The different styles, starting at top left and working over, appear to be a musician or artist, then an average joe or geek, followed by a hippie, and then starting at the bottom left are a business professional and finally a surfer.  These five archetypes in American are prevalent in the media and recognized by everyone.

The Business of Media

Media is anything that can be used relay or store information.  In the ever changing culture that we live in now a days, the use of media is crucial and ever present in our everyday lives.   There are many mediums that are present to relay current information, be it the internet and television to the printed media such newspapers and magazines. 

                Media is used so abundantly used in our culture because we live in a consumer culture which means that the idea of business and goods are quite prevalent in much that we do.  Cultural studies is a very important concept when discuss the idea of media because it is the study of have people perceive and interpret the media in the lives.  Theorists in cultural studies believe that the media reflects the beliefs of the dominant class in a culture which in ours happens to be the big business and corporations.  This reflects in the media by creating the need for profit as the foremost motive.  This is why ads have progressed from just trying to sell an item to a consumer to being is own form of entertainment and works of art themselves.

My Three Novels

Watchmen

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

The Sandman Vol. 1

The three novels that I have chosen to read this semester are: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, and The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming.  I chose each of these novels for different reasons.  I chose The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming for its art style.  The novel uses a variety of different techniques to illustrate its points, be it photographs, complex drawings, or simple illustrations.  I picked the novel, Watchmen because I had seen the movie and thought the story was interesting so I was curious to see how the novel compares to how the movie portrayed it.  I selected The Sandman because I have always enjoyed reading supernatural stories so the supernatural aspect of the novel really appealed to me.  I also chose these three novels because they varied from each other and artistic style and story so that I could give my self a variety of looks. 

Understanding Comics: The Compex vs the Simple

Understanding Comics is a graphic novel that discussed the basics of comics through the use of many ideas.  One of the ideas that is discussed in Understanding Comics is the use of complex, artfully done images in complement with a more simply done, cartoony image in a way to express ideas.  This use of different degrees of images are quite prevalent in most comics, from the TinTin comics in Europe to the Japanese works where they pretty much have photographic backgrounds with a simple cartoon as the characters.  This practice has not just been limited to comics but it is the style that was very common in Disney Movies.  An example of a graphic novel that uses this concept to help to emphasize its point is the graphic novel Maus, by Art Spiegelman.  Maus is about the Spiegelman’s Jewish father and his survival during the Jewish Holocaust in WWII.  In many instances, such as when Spiegelman’s father talks about the depression his wife felt after the birth of his first son, the artist would show a simpler image and then the next from would be a bit more serious so he would add extra line and shading to give a feel of more depth.  Another instance of this is when a frame shows a character by the name of Miss Stefanska in prison for being in possession of documents that another character had given her without an explanation.  The scene shows a very dark, heavy lined and shaded jail cell with Miss Stefanska being drawn more simply which in a way portrays her as simpler and innocent but stuck in this heavy, constricting jails cell.  So in the end, this type of illustration is quite popular in the present day and can be quite useful to emphasis an artist’s ideas a bit better.   

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is a Web Development tool created by Adobe to help in the development of code for websites.  Dreamweaver is a very useful tool for the fact that you don’t necessarily have to enter in every letter of every piece of code that you need, but in stead you type in certain pieces so it has an idea of what you want and them you just fill in the blanks.  You can even take this a step further and use premade templates and edit them as you go to keep everything similar and in order through several pages.  Since you are working with the bare of the code and you can start from the beginning, you can edit it to your specific specifications, be it color, size, shape or layout.  There are some drawbacks though to the use of Dreamweaver.  One is the fact that you mainly use it to make static websites which not the preferred style of website design in this period of constantly changing websites.  I also don’t like the fine it a problem that your whole website can be thrown of by the inclusion or omission of one symbol and then you have to search all of your code to fine the problem if there is only just one, but this may be more of a problem with code and not fully with Dreamweaver.