Effects of design elements in magazine advertisements

Abstract

In this study, unlike previous studies where participants were instructed to pay attention to the advertisements, we set up a more naturalistic situation of reading magazine. Five major design elements (body text, head text, brand logo, product image, and human model image) were investigated and our results showed pictorial elements captured more looking time and fixations than textual elements in general and textual elements received more looking time and fixations per unit size than pictorial elements. Also, a comparative data analysis of two different but very similar advertisements of competing products provided design implications regarding the use of human model image and head text. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.