About this exhibit

ABOUT THIS EXHIBIT

Newspaper advertisements are a crucial component since they not only market products and services to a specific audience but also offer glimpses into the customs, artifacts, and culture of the time and place in which they were employed. In Chile's case, English-speaking immigrants affected Chilean culture in significant ways during the nineteenth century. A hybrid culture was created when ideas, cultural practices, and material objects were passed back and forth between communities, forming part of each group's identity. This exhibit examines the different themes found in three Anglo-Chilean newspapers and explores how aspects like the use of the language, design choices, the showcase of a foreign culture, and description related to luxury might have been influenced by the social and cultural context.

The Valparaiso Review

Each issue of this magazine runs the same group of advertisements, and none of them uses significant amounts of Spanish. In terms of graphic design, all advertisements rely on different font typefaces, sizes, and formats; more complex elements like drawings or illustrations do not appear.

Valparaíso and West Coast Mail

In this newspaper, the advertisements are far more descriptive than they were in earlier newspapers. Most ads focus on goods or services: hotels, English shops, etcetera. While some of the ads are written in Spanish, the majority are still in English. This newspaper’s graphic design relies primarily on typography, with some images beginning to appear.

The Star of Chile

This newspaper features far more diversity of advertisements than did earlier publications, and the ads promote a wide range of goods and services. The Spanish language appears more frequently than in earlier newspapers; this is especially the case in advertisement titles. The newspaper also emphasizes images, as well as other graphic design elements like typeface and format. In comparison with earlier newspapers, The Star of Chile’s ads are no longer as text-heavy, and some even experiment with space and form by highlighting graphic elements, juxtaposing innovative fonts, text boxes, ad sizes, and shapes, etcetera. In tandem with these innovations, the Star of Chile’s advertisement section is more important within the newspaper overall, with more pages dedicated to advertising and a greater diversity of content.