You be the judge: Teaching image-based advertising through a persuasive analysis of Olympic posters

As students are establishing themselves in an increasingly visual culture, images should be harnessed as important pedagogical tools for applying concepts and increasing student engagement. When students are given opportunities to analyse images in the classroom context, they become more aware of the variety of visual texts, from advertisements to websites, that frequently command their attention. This single-class activity employs visual texts as a site of inquiry for critique and application of persuasive strategies in an undergraduate level classroom. It is designed to help students explore applications of the concepts of image-based advertising and syntactic indeterminacy through a critical analysis of art posters from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Students role-play ‘becoming the judge’ on the International Olympic Committee as they seek to select and provide rationale for the poster that best communicates the ideals of the Olympic Games.