Using Shape Analysis

In chapter one of Mary Stewart's textbook, Launching The Imagination, she discusses the topic of using shape. She uses an example that is not only an artistic creation, but it follows the "play on words" notion very well. The example is Figure 1.48 and is an ad that discourages cocaine abuse called, "The average high induced by cocaine lasts thirty minutes. The average death induced by cocaine lasts slightly longer"(p.20). The figure contains a small vertical white space that has small black letters that read, "The average high induced by cocaine lasts thirty minutes." Immediately to the right the rest of the ad it is black. The blackness contains the white words, "The average death induced by cocaine lasts slightly longer." The contrast between light and dark could symbolically create the idea of light in life, and darkness in death. The darker portion is also a longer rectangle that seems to make the ad play more on its dark shading and less on the title of the chapter's section, which is "Using Shape" (p. 20).