Context of Practice - Lecture: Globalisation, Sustainability and the Media

Globalisation
Socialist
(Globalization) in its literal sense is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together.

Capitalist
The elimination of state -enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result.

Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”).  

 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

McDonaldization - George Ritzer

The expanse of the social economy. Describes the wide ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of american society as well as the rest of the world.

A Mc World with Mc Jobs and Mc Citizens

McLuhan - Global Village, written in the 60's believed we would turn into a globalised tribe all connected.

Centripetal forces - bringing the world together in uniform global society

Centrifugal forces - Tearing the world apart in tribal wars

Lots of problems with a globalised world. in a globalised community what happens to tradition and identity. But more importantly if countries and nations states loose their ability to control what will happen. 

It is an new form of imperialism and a form of taking control. In the past you had to invade using armies etc... But now its much more sophisticated and subtle, creating global imperialism. 

One of the main causes is the media. media conglomerates operate as oligopolies. 80% control the whole media, most products.

US media power can be thought of as a new form of imperialism
-local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shaped, mirroring old school colonialism
-schiller - dominance of us driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of the world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that cant afford it.

Big Brother - created by the same company but franchised out all over the world. 

Media presents an image which implies how to be successful but it has very real consequences. A current trend in india is dying skin white, people buy it because of being surrounded by images telling them how to be successful.

Chomsky and Herman - Propaganda Model - 5 basic filters:

- Ownership

Rupert Murdoch owns News of the World, The Sun, The Sunday Times, The TImes, NY Post, BSkyB, Fox TV and much much more....

They lead a huge campaign against the Labour party and backed Tony Blair who won it. They backed him as they were going to relax the monopoly laws on media.

- Sourcing

If you are a journalist you need to present a sanitised idea of the world or else you are out of a job. You get banned kicked out etc.. people won't want to be interviewed by you if you don't write what they want.

- Funding

- Anti Ideologies

reproduce stereotypes of the world to appeal to mass audience. It makes things seem black and white and this creates a 'us and them' idea whilst also cementing the idea that our world views are correct.

- Flak

An organised group of people who lobby against certain ideas about the world.

Al Gore (2006) 'An Inconvenient Truth'

The film won loads of awards and became influential. 

Groups lobbied this because they realised what would happen if they believed it, their companies would not work.

Context of Practice - Essay: Package Design Characteristics

Before I write my essay I will write down different elements and characteristics that I notice affecting buyers decision. This will help me by having a list to refer to when I write my essay. I will add to this post as I go.

Persona
Having a person or face to a brand. People connect on an emotional level when a person is linked to the product. It makes you think it is hand made and personal not mass produced.

Shape and Material
When all the products are the same having a unique and memorable shape makes you stand out from the rest on the shelf. If it is different people will want to pick it up and look at it. Equally the material used appeals to the tactile sense. People are more likely to buy a product if the material it is produced in feels like better quality as they then believe the product too will be better quality.

Window into the Product
If the product has part of the design which is transparent so they can see through to the product this breaks down the barrier. People feel more comfortable and safe buying that product because they can see what it looks like, they do not feel like they are taking such a risk on a new product.

Hand Rendered Elements
Anything that looks hand done: drawings, paintings and illustrations - even if they have been digitally created people like design which has a humanistic element because it again, links it to a person.

Context of Practice - Lecture: Ethics - What is Good?

Plato and Aristotle made the purpose of ethics central to their Philosophy.

First things First
First things First A manifesto which had the best interest in creativity. In short it argues that visual communicators and creatives were wasting their talents by taking jobs that contribute little to the world. Jobs such as Advertising Toothpastes and Cigarettes etc... It is in no was anti consumerist but a call of arms. The aim of it was to use your talents to improve the world and not waste them on menial tasks. The journal was republished in Adbusters (2000), A very anti capitalist publication. In the republication a lot of it was changed.

All the products were changed into items which were charged with an ethical dilemma. So if you are using your skills to advertise credit cards then you are encouraging people to get into dept. You support and implicitly endorse an environment which is changing the way citizen consumers think and interact with each other.

The first manifesto's point is to put your talents to use. However the second one has twisted it by saying that designing for a capitalist society is wrong and feeds into it.

A meme is an idea central to every advert. It rhymes with dream. They tend to be a catchphrase, a concept or tune or belief -  something which gets stuck in your head and then passed from brain to brain. They argue that memes should be used in a warfare against the capitalist culture.

Victor Papanek - 'Most things are designed not for the needs of the people but for the needs of manufactures to sell to people'


How do we determine what is good?

- Subjective Relativism
There are no universal moral norms of right and wrong. All people decide right and wrong for themselves. It is up to the individual to decide for themselves. Although this works on a small scale but on a society scale it would turn to chaos.

- Cultural Relativism
The ethical theory that whats right or wrong depends on place and/or time. But problems begin to occur when you apply your cultural values to other cultures and humanity as a whole.

- Divine Command Theory
Good actions are aligned with the will of God, bad actions are contray to the will of God. The holy book helps make the decisions. However it causes issues when all ethics are layed out for you by the God.


Kant
Katianism - Deontological Ethics. Kant's philosophy was all based around the theory of Duty.  People wills should be based on moral rules, Therefore its important that our actions are based on appropriate moral rules. So we must think about what actions affect wider society. To determine our actions we must use the categorical imperative.

Categorical Imperative:
1. Act only from moral rules that you can at the same time universalise it.

2. Act so that you always treat both yourself and other people as ends in themselves and never as means to an end.

John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism, Consequentialist Ethics
An action is right to the extent that it increases the total happiness of the affects parties. An action is wrong to the extent that decreases the total happiness of the affected parties. Happiness may have many definitions such as as: advantage, benefit, good or pleasure.

Social Contract Theory - Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau
An agreement between individuals held together by common interest. Avoids society degenerating onto the 'state of nature' or 'war of all against all' (Hobbes) "Morality consists in a set of rules, governing how people are to treat one another, that rational people will agree to accept, for their mutual benefit, on the condition that other follow those rules as well.

Toolbox of Moral Ethics Theories.
Whether presented with problems that are easy or difficult to solve, the four workable ethical theories,
-Katianism
-Act Utilitarianism
-Rule Utilitarianism
-Social Contract Theory
could provide us with possible solutions to many of the problems raised by the ' First Things First' manifesto.

S.M.A.R.T

Specific  - Details exactly what needs to be done.

Measurable - Achievements can be measured in terms of units or specific success criteria.

Achievable - That resources, scope and scale are within your capabilities and capacity.

Realistic - The objectives are possible to attain which is important for your motivation.

Time Bound - The period of time, target dates, schedule or time table is clearly defined.


My Current Responsive Briefs:

Sprung Records
- Finish cutting out business cards
- Look into how to make a stamp
- Create Phone Poster
- Blog about making Business cards
- T-shirts?
- Finish Poster

J20
- Scan in water colours
- Experiment with acrylics
- Research Competitors
- Research Watercolour in advertising

Feathr
- Look at other designs
- Research theory into mood
- Blue China - Tells a Story

Context of Practice - Essay: 10 Strategies for Successful Packaging

Seeing as I have now pretty much clarified my question I decided I would begin to research into what makes packaging successful in supermarkets when there is so much choice. Below is an article published on Creative Blog which I have found quite interesting.


Leading brand consultancy Elmwood offers 10 essential pieces of advice for making your brand designs fly off the shelves...

There's an old saying: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." This is a perfect packaging metaphor, because the fundamental truth is that the final purchasing decision is made at the shelf edge in store. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that advertising and sales promotion is what drives the customer's decision-making process and, as a result, this is the area that usually commands the greatest amount of deliberation and debate.

The truth is, no matter how much time and money your marketing team spends on promoting your product or how much effort your sales team puts into getting your product listed in the key retail outlets, if your pack fails to deliver at point of sale because it doesn't look good then all that investment spent elsewhere is largely wasted.

So how do we make the most of all that advertising and promotional work? How do we get people reaching out for our pack on the shelves? Read on for our ten strategies for success...

1. Make your product stand out
First of all, we have to recognise that our products are competing for a few short seconds of attention. In any one supermarket there are around 40,000 different products on display and the average shopper spends no more than an hour in store during their weekly shop. So you'd need to register more than 10 products per second if you were to see every product! The first and most important rule, therefore, is to get your product noticed - it must stand out rather than blend in.

2. Break with convention
Next time you go shopping, take a look at the humble OXO pack and see how something so small fights above its weight. Similarly, think about breaking the rules of a category. Innocent is perhaps an often and overused example but still a great one. When it launched into the highly colourful category of soft drinks, it went with a very white pack as opposed to the category norm of using pictures of fruit with similarly vibrant fruity graphics. Finally, shape is the first thing the human eye recognises, so unique packaging shapes are a great way to help your product stand out - think Perrier and Toilet Duck.

3. Products with purpose
We are seeing a consumer backlash against big corporate fat cats and a growing desire to support real brands with real beliefs and values. What this means is that brands big and small need to have a clear purpose beyond price and demonstrate that they are good corporate citizens. Take the bottled water market, for example, which has recently come under fire from government ministers for being environmentally and socially unethical. Bottled water is shipped around the world, adding to the issue of climate change, when most of us could make do with tap water, especially when so many people in countries such as Africa go without. Cue Thirsty Planet, a new water brand that provides free drinking water for an African child for life, when you purchase just one multi-pack of the water.

4. Add personality
Building on the idea of leveraging a brand's authenticity, the next step is to bring packs to life with a strong personality (what we call 'authentic attitude'). In short, think about language and imagery that helps to tell an engaging story rather than just being matter of fact. Filthy is a new brand of highly indulgent chilled chocolate desserts and its name gives consumers permission to be unashamedly naughty.

5. Feel-good factor
We live in a frightening world, a world of anxiety fuelled by the media's exposure of terrorism, food scares, global warming, child abuse and abduction. An antidote for this is to make people smile and/or remind us of the time when life appeared to be safer. Anything you can do to make your designs resonate with today's anxious consumer will give you an advantage. Competitors may well copy your product specification, but it's much more difficult to copy how your brand makes a customer feel. So packs that bring a smile to faces, like our own new tea brand Make Mine a Builders, complete with builder's cleavage on the 'bottom' of the pack, are the order of the day.

6. Keep it simple
With so much to say about health, nutrition, cooking or usage instructions on your products and yet a desire to cut back on the amount of packaging, the key is to keep things simple. Going back to the principle of 'standout', make sure you don't compromise legibility by overcomplicating packs with too many messages. In a one-second world, less is definitely more.

7. Tiered branding
The own-brand strategy we developed with Coles supermarket in Australia designed to ensure that their stores provide customers with products that meet their everyday needs in every way. The new own brand hierarchy involves three distinct tiers: cheapest on display, mid tier and premium tier. The mid-tier proposition, "You'll love Coles...", is based on the principle that consumers will love Coles products because they make their lives easier. Coles will help them eat better, save money, save time and reduce waste. An important element of the new offer is the use of a product advocate - real customers and colleagues who appear on the packs to highlight the key benefits of the product and give reasons to buy.

8. The cost of transport
Retailers and consumers are ever more obsessed with the green agenda. There's nothing new about recycling, but there are a number of new dimensions to green packaging that relate to transport. In simple terms, the challenge is to 'ship less air'. In other words, you need to make sure your packaging is as minimal as possible because the more products you can get on a pallet, the less trucks will need to be on the road. As well as saving on CO2 emissions, these measures also save on transport costs.

9. Speed to shelf
If there are 40,000 different packs in a store then every second counts in the delivery and stocking process. Just think how many man-hours per day you would save by making your outer shipping case also your 'display on shelf' case. If you can save a retailer just 10 seconds per pack in its time to decant from warehouse to shelf, you will also certainly gain grace and favour too.

10. Protect yourself
If you have a good product at a good price, the competition will try to mimic your success, so make sure you register and patent everything you possibly can. And if you've followed the strategies on these pages, you will almost certainly have protectable equity in your packaging.

Context of Practice - Lecture: Consumerism

The Consumer Dream which makes us happy and content but docile at the same time. The system that we live in works as a force of social control.

Sigmund Freud 

New theory of human nature. He is the father of psycho-analysis, a theory which is still a modern discipline today. We only understand a small percentage of our make up and how we act in certain ways. one of Freud's contentions is that in our core we have very basic animal drives, this is all stored in the ID which contains the animalistic desires which are repressed and never thought about but Freud argues that these drive everything we do - actions, thoughts etc... 

Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) freud argued that there is a fundamental tension between civilisation and the individual. As a hangover from our evolution we retain a very violent and sexual instincts which are part of our makeup but we cant act on in our civilised society. The human instincts are incompatible with the well being of the community. We are constantly frustrated and we can never realise the actions which we want to act upon. We displace these desires onto other things and this is where consumerism comes in. If these instinctual desires are acted upon then you become happy and content, you feel like you are living. 

WW1 mass destruction on a large scale. This was a vindication for freud as it clarified his forming theories. This is what happens when you suppress peoples natural instincts. 

Edmund Bernays

He channeled the ideas of Freud into a discipline known as public relations. He was employed to work in the war as a propagandist. What he realised was that if you could find a way to attach some sort of instinctual meaning to otherwise unrelated consumer products - you could make people want them and desire them and even need them. If we can find a way to make people feel that their instinctual desires have been met when they buy something it would not only fulfil their desires but create a demand. 

One of his first early successes was working with cigarette companies to try and get over the social taboo of women smoking. It was not considered to be a feminine thing to do for cultured young women. He organised a PR stunt in 1929 Easter Day Parade. He paid all the women in the parade to take out a cigarette, light it and start smoking. He also contacted the newspaper and told them that it was a suffragette . smoking then increased because women linked smoking to being free and independent as the suffragettes were (even though they weren't). He managed to attach instinctual desires such as being free and independent to something completely irrelevant such as cigarettes.

His company began the use of celebrity endorsements as celebrities are seen as a symbol of success. By linking a product with a celebrity means you link the product with the fame and success. Politicians and Government began to take notice and use PR also.

At the same time as Public Relations began to grow the method of Fordism is beginning to grow. It is a way of making things on the production line, instead of everyone working on everything people were set to work on one small area which would fit into the bigger picture. So instead of making a car they would make little bits of cars. This speeded up productivity and also meant people didn't know all the trade secrets so that they remained the monopoly. It also meant that the rate productivity went up allowed the company to pay individuals more money. Which meant they could have a disposable income which played into the idea of consumerism. 

However there is a limited number of things you could buy, once a family has brought a car they don't need to buy another car. So Branding comes in which tries to give each product an identity which removes the mass production image and creates a more personal product to which people buy into. 

Bernays was one of the first people to sell cars and cement the idea of buying the car being more to do with your sexual potency rather than the benefits of the car.

Brands move away from the things themselves but sell the life style. So we shift from a need culture to a desire culture. People begin to link them self with the things they consume. 

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The Hidden Persuaders - Vance Packard - 8 common techniques which work on an unconscious level where companies use to create a desire for their product:

- selling emotional security

- selling reassurance of worth

- selling ego-gratification

- selling creative outlets

- selling love objects

- selling a sense of power 

- selling a sense of roots

- selling immortality 

Emotional Security - Fridge/Freezer - actually waste more food because you buy more food to store but it goes out of date and you end up chucking it. But you are buying into the security of knowledge knowing you have food at home. 

Creative outlets - Aunt Jemima's pancake mix -  you had to add the egg yourself but people bought it because they were sold the idea that they were being creative and cooking.

Selling a sense of Power -  masculinity sold through a car. 

It give you an identity that perhaps you do not have in the real world.

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Walter Lippmann

A new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd 'manufacturing consent' The idea of consumerism is represented as a way to mass control the masses. The government began to deregulate markets and introduced larger shops. People were given the illusion of being happy whilst actually they were docile. 

October 24th 1929 - Wall Street Crash it was the first time where the political class realised that if you let the business' do what they want then it will destroy society. It lead to the great depression.

Roosevelt and the 'New Deal' (1933-36)

-Put monopoly controls on the market.

-Put large taxes on the highest earning business' which then got redistributed amongst the poorest people. 

New Yorks World Fair

What happened on the back of Roosevelt's new deal meant that people like Edward Bernays were annoyed and they started a giant PR exercise - the New Yorks World Fair. It was meant to be a celebration of everything great about America and everything that makes it unique and free. The message shown throughout - what makes America great is how much you can buy if you want to. You are an independent individual who can buy what ever you want. Buy into this product - consumerism is freeing you and your participation in it is helping America to lead the world into the future. Big business really knows whats good for the country rather than politicians. 

- Consumerism is an ideological project.

- We believe that through consumption our desires can be met.

- The legacy of Bernays Public Relations can be felt in all aspects of 21st Century Society. 

Context of Practice - Essay (Study Task 03): Tutorial About Essay Idea

The essay question that I had planned and showed was:

'To what extent does package design affect sales'

What I want to focus on is how package design increases or decreases sales in supermarkets. It has always interested me why people by certain products over others; in a supermarket all the pasta is the same but what makes you pick pasta A over pasta B - The packaging does. With this in mind I wanted to write my essay on what it is that sells the product through the design.

The feedback I got was that it was a good simple question which opened up a lot of possibilities. Richard said to perhaps establish the 6 or 7 characteristics or aspects of successful packaging. The essay would then become a guide explaining how to make successful packaging.

My practical piece could either be an unsuccessful packaging made successful using the guide I had written in my essay or the other way around -  a successful package stripped back into the 6 or 7 key characteristics. It could even be using the 6 or 7 rules and branding something which wouldn't be brought like a stone or something.

My first step will be to research into successful packaging and analysis what makes it successful and try to define some key aspects. I want to define the main aspects which subconsciously attract people to the product.

My essay question will be:

"Outline and explain the key characteristics of package design in supermarkets crucial for success"

The Designer That I Am - Study Task 2: Triangulation

The First things First 1964 Manifesto begins by arguing that the creatives in the world have been brought up under the impression that advertising techniques are the most lucrative and effective means of using their talents. They argue that using these techniques along side talent contributes nothing to society "By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity".

I've decided to look at this Axe mens shower gel advert as it shows both the positives and negatives within advertising whilst questioning the socio-political factors that emerge. In the 2000's version of the First Things First manifesto they strongly argue that the designers behind the advertisements are completely responsible and even support the effect of the message on the masses. "Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact." (2000, First Things First) This quote implies that the audience is docile and unable to form their own views and opinions about products featured in adverts. To say that advertisements have such a strong grip on the general public to the extent that it changes the way they think and interact is ludicrous. Firstly, it is insulting to public as it is insinuating that the designers are above the masses. It implies they have an outside view, watching advertising destroy the world whilst not being affected by it themselves. Secondly it clearly isn't true, if adverts such as the one above were able to change the general public then Axe would have an 100% success rate and other products would cease to exist.

Although the majority of people don't take things at face value and know that the advert isn't going to come true if they use Axe, there is a certain level of innocence. People unconsciously buy into the life style and image sold in the advert with the hope that even a small element of their life will change. Advertisers rely on this innocence to be able to manipulate the viewers unconscious feelings. "We imagine that we engage directly with the content of the magazine, the Tv commercial, the pasta sauce, or perfume, but the content is always mediated by design and its design that helps direct how we perceive it and how it makes us feel." (First Things First - Revisited - Rick Poynor) It is true that we are aware of design and its supposed affects on us contrary to the 2000's First Things First. However as Rick Poynor argues we acknowledge the direct content of the advert but it is meditated to us through design. This design, on a deeper level, affects how we feel although this feeling may sway our purchasing decisions it certainly doesn't change the way we speak, interact and respond.

"If thinking individuals have a responsibility to withstand the proliferating technologies of persuasion, then the designer, as a skilled manipulator of those technologies, carries a double responsibility."

Context of Practice: Making Connections

Deconstruction - Derrida created deconstruction as a mean of questioning these binary oppositions. He challenges the reality of the modes it is not just black and white. Deconstruction is just a mode of thinking.


'Design, Writing, Research' - Lupton and Miller, 1996:

Ellen Lupton explores aspects and methods of deconstruction and how it had an impact on Graphic Design Practice.

She discussing reality and representation. The reality of the real world is more important that the world of images etc...

'Derrida asserted that an intellectual system(or episteme) built on the opposition between reality and representation has, in fact, depended on representation to build itself.'

One of the oppositions that factors significantly in Derrida's discussion is that of speech/writing where speech is privileged over writing - "speech draws on interior consciousness, but writing is dead and abstract."
 - Greek Philosophers didn't write anything down as it was seen as inferior to word.

"If writing is but a copy of spoken language, typography is a mode of representation ever farther removed from primal source of meaning in the mind of the author."

Speech/writing - writing/typography - seeing/reading

"Design and typography work at the edges of writing, determining the shape and style of letters, the spaces between them and their placement on the page. Typography, from its position at the margins of communication, has moved away from speech."

Allen Hori, typography challenges the traditional opposition between seeing and reading by treating the surface as both theoretical content and sensual form, as both text and texture. Rather than deliver information directly, Hori's poster expects the reader to work to uncover its message."

He argues there is no hierarchy or opposites but everything is balanced. This is what she argues with Typography that it allows us to appreciate different types.

House of leaves By Mark Danielewsky the book is layout is a mix of the story from two different people it encourages a dual way of reading.

Pastiche by Fredric Jameson - is appropriating styles from the past. A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. He is a marxist so everything he writes has a Marxist tint. We become detached from history because the designs are regurgitated and then are known as designs today.

What are other examples of 'Pastiche' In graphic design can you think of?

Soap and Glory

Supreme

The Great Gatsby

Kath Kidston

Forming a Research Question:

What is the general theme? (editiorial, branding, typography, advertising, new media, print making)
Branding - Packaging

What are the current/contextual/historical issues of the general theme? 
Placement, material, shops - supermarkets compared to high end shops. Is it on offer? etc...

What do I want to know or be able to do in regard to this theme? From this into a question that implies a conclusion.. what, how , to what extent?
I want to be able to create packaging that stands out and sells.

How does this relate to my (increasingly specialist) Practice?
I have an interest in package design, and knowing the theory behind it would help my practice.

To what extent does package design and package placement affect sales?