ABSTRACT
Imagine a typical day in your life. If you have a job outside the home or go to school, you may rush out the door and grab a bus, enter a subway, or jump into your car; or perhaps you just walk down the street to a neighborhood store or to see a friend. Wherever you are going, one thing is pretty certain: Your visual environment, filled with images that bombard you constantly as you move through the day, has been defined for you. One day try counting the number of advertising images you encounter: television commercials and flyers on your doorstep; signs on telephone poles and billboards on the expressway; illuminated ads in the subways and painted ads covering buses and in bus shelters; ads on the placemats at fast food restaurants, in banks, in shopping malls, in the morning newspaper you read, and, in the case of York University where I teach, even inside the bathroom stalls!
