OUGD401 - Study Task 4 - Summarising and Paragraphing

In the text 'Wally Ollins; On Brand',  Ollins explores the function of branding in the modern day world. He begins by reminiscing about a simpler time, when branding was used 'as a symbol of consistency' in the market. It signified a certain quality, price and appearance of a product and promised a distinct reputation to the consumer. The brand was purely related to the product.  

Nowadays however that whole concept has been 'turned on its head'. Branding speaks volumes more about the consumer than the product, illustrating everything from what kind of music we listen to, what we like to eat and especially what we like to wear. 

Olin's is both excited, amazed and almost bewildered by this strange obsession we have with brands, calling it 'a unique manifestation of out time'. Branding has become inescapable, rooting itself in every single aspect of our lives. Half the time it's there in the background, a subconscious stream of decisions we make on a daily basis. The other half we actively involve ourselves in. The clothes we wear, the make of phone we own, the places we shop at are all an 'outward and visible demonstration of private and personal affiliation.'

There is the constant question of whether it is the brand that controls us or we that control the brand and Ollin's makes it perfectly clear that it is we the consumer who decide who rise and who fall. We have 100% control over the brand. Brands are based on identity and it is us who decide what our identities are. Despite corporations creating images for themselves for the sake of targeting a larger audience and therefore making  profit, if nobody can relate to what that brand is symbolising, that brand will crash and burn. 

Olins, W. (2003) Wally Olins: On Brand. London: Thames and Hudson.

OUGD401 - Task 3 - Reading and Understanding a Text

Chosen Question: What is the relationship between branding and the consumer self? 

Book: Olins, W. (2003) Wally Ollins: On Brand. London: Thames and Hudson. 

1) Tone of Voice: What is the authors stance on the subject? 

He is excited by and in favour of branding. 

'One upon a time' - quite informal, fairytale beginning, idealistic, reminiscing about the past as a simpler time.

The 'brand' is a glimmer of hope in a murky, unreliable world. 

When his perception on branding changes he seems both fascinated and curious about the way branding is based on the image it creates for us rather than the product it is promoting.

The author embraces this change and finds it exciting. 

He uses very emotive and descriptive language to talk about branding.

2) 5 Key Points from the Text

1 - Branding speaks volumes more about the consumer than the product. Branding used to be used to signify/ promise  certain quality of a product. Now branding acts more to represent our own image as individuals. Branding is used by everyone and is found everywhere.

2 - Branding is 100% controlled by consumers (customers). We choose who rise and who fall.

3 - Branding can have different functions and the same brand can be used by different people for different reasons. 'Nike use powerful all-inclusive emotions to target a worldwide audience.' (Runner- fashion statement + functional) (Average Joe - Wear to show off and prove self) (Poor Window Cleaner - Saves up to buy shoes so he too can own a part of the worlds glamour + fashion. For him the shoes are more symbolic than functional). 

4 - The most successful brands are objective. Brands such as VISA that are purely functional rather than fashionable. 

5 - Brands represent identitty. 

3) 5 Key Quotes from the Text

1 - "The brand was a symbol of consistency." (chapter 1, p14, paragraph 1)

2 - "Brands were created (...) to sell products by creating and projecting colourful but simple ideas clearly, again and again." (p14, paragraph 4)

3 - "This is a unique manifestation of out time. It has never ever happened before." (p15, paragraph 2)

4 - 'Why do we wear clothes with labels on the outside? Why do brands pentrte the entire world regardless of every other defining factor - nation, religion, social or economic grouping, culture?

Why are brands such a clear and unique manifestation of our time? 

Simply because in a world that is bewildering in terms of competitive clamour, in which rational choice has become almost impossible, brands represent clarity, reassurance, consistency, status, membership - everything that enables human beings to help define themselves. Brands represent identity. " (p 27, last 2 paragraphs) 

5 - "There are very few brands, even big ones, where function dominates. Visa, unusually for a brand these days, is more about function than symbolism." (p 17, paragraph 2) 

COP Lecture - 2,000 year history of the image

Lascaux caves, France.

Earliest know examples of vis com.

Philosopher thinks it's an attempt to communicate with the gods. Mystical images. Magic. Shaman Power.

Dots in caves are hallucinating, channelling the unconscious made physical. Pure expressive mark making.

Magiciens de la terre. Conceptual artist Richard long. Mud painted on wall. (Sun) ancient paintings on floor. Shows similarity between history of art and now. Cultural appropriation. The entirety of the worlds culture was developing towards western modern art. 

Cult value of cave painting with the cultic experience of viewing art in a gallery. If you look at these paintings the experience is like falling into a void. (Like laying back and looking at the night sky) out of body mystical experience. Sit and stare and then start to cry out of being overwhelmed. The paintings are framed by the history of their settings an their description. False potency, false magic by the way they're presented & institutionalised. You feel the way you're told to feel. Cry because you're meant to cry. 

Papal alter & frescoes, basilica of San francesco d'Assisi, Umbria, Italy. 

Spiritual, dominant images. Express money and cultural power (Make you feel poorer, less spiritual).

Mona Lisa- no one knows why it's important. Why is it so popular? Has society made it important?

John Berger says what happens when people can reproduce these things themselves? 

Mona Lisa becomes 'street chic, ironic' on a tshirt 

'Kitsch' and garish in a plate. 

Marcel Duchamp's painting of Mona  l.h.o.o.q 'she's got a hot ass' in French. An attack on cultural authority made possible by technology. 

Graffiti art is always about taking art outside of galleries (only visited by middle class white people) & putting it in the streets available for free. Taking it away from its elite setting. Challenges traditional art. Mona Lisa as mujahideen. Dig on the media which is almost as bad as art for imposing ideas on the world.

Banksy's art is re-appropriation. Death of graffiti. Pointless. Drilled off the walls to get put back in the galleries. Meaning becomes neutral. 

Jackson pollock. Expressive art. Makes them seem more important and other worldly than they actually are. 

Red painting. Pop art. Roy Lichtenstein. Bogus art made literally into a cartoon. Using pop culture to attack high culture and it's pretensions. 

Andy Warhol weeing on paint. Attack on Jackson Pollock.

Following the revolution in Russia had the most developed visual communication. Banned avant guard culture in Russia. (Progressive, western decadence). Banned any such kind of art. Only thing that was allowed was old fashioned traditional  realist posters. Cultural repression in communist practices. Opposite to free western mind.

Art in china is about creating icons, glorification of leader. Red flag because of the blood stained by martyred people. 

Alberto Corda image of gorilla fighter Che Guevara. Image making. Immortalising people through art. Makes them more important. 

Shepard fairy. 'Hope' street art. Barack Obama employed him to design the poster for his image campaign. False promise. He re-contextualised it by turning the face into the 'guy Fawkes' mask from the film V for Vendetta to represent the occupy movement (protesting against social and economic inequality around the world) 

Gillray (1809) political etchings of Napoleon.

Steve bell: David Cameron poster.

Responsibility that comes with image making. Gives you power to manipulate. 

Guerrilla girls. Billboard. History of art is dominated by men and the west (white race) power of vis com as a revolutionary weapon to change course of history.

Nick Ut famous photograph catalysed the downfall of the Vietnam wall. Draws on human emotion.

'The haywain' iconic English painting: depiction of England. Green and pleasant land. Fiction. Not the truth. Idyllic. Workers and peasants were rioting in the street at this time. (1821) visual lie has become the truth of 'Englishness'.

Gainsborough 'mr and mrs Andrews' commissioned to show wealth. Paintings are about power. Paintings are bought to show power and wealth. Displaying the power of the owner.

Advertising displays perfect life. Promises that you should have that perfect life. We are incomplete and insufficient without it. Dolce and Gabana 'family life'.

Dolce and Gabana ad. Trying to exploit a misogynist personality to sell things. Causing controversy and drawing attention to the campaign. 

'united colours of Benetton' (clothing company) Controversial adverts. Bosnian Sniper in civil war blood stained clothes. 'Humanist message' we're all the same colour on the inside. Transcends the laws of advertising. Push visual communication beyond it's established limits, not 'evil corporate advertisers'. Really cynical exploitation of human death for own personal gain OR immortalising the tragedy of human death? Frailty of human existence. An image can last far longer than we are around. 

Post morton photography. Cheated death through image making. They are always alive. 

Opposing argument: Photography is always about death. You take something that is dynamic and you freeze it in time. 

Photo of My lai massacre. Americans slaughtered loads of innocent people. Robert Haeberle. Recording this moment before they were shot. can be relayed forever as his form of activism. Sad but more powerful. Transcends time.

Relates back to the cave paintings standing the test of time. 

OUGD401 - Study Task 2 - Finding Research Sources

Group Task :

Find at least 2 distinct research sources and note down the following:

Books: Author, Title, Relevant chapters, relevant pages.

Websites; Author/Organisation. Url. Date accessed.

Evaluate.


We were given Google Books (https://books.google.co.uk/) to research 'Theories on advertising'. Google books is designed to help you find relevant books and specific pages related to the subject you are investigating. Google will offer you the previews of books and allow you to search for key terms and phrases. It is a largely free service with the option to pay for premiums such as full texts with no missing pages.

Here are some of the most interesting articles related to Gender and Advertising that I found using Google books as my main source of research.

Controversies in Contemporary Advertising

Kim Bartel Sheehan

Pages 89 - 91

Chapter 7: 'Gender and Advertising: How Gender shapes meaning.'

This small chapter begins to explores the history of gender and advertising, and the roles it plays in society. You can see where key words are highlighted in yellow. 

Stereotyping was one of the main things that came to mind when I first examined this question and I found a whole chapter about it on Google Books.

'Women are presented in one of four ways: The Glamorous Sex Kitten, The Sainted Mother, The devious witch, or the hard face corporate and political climber.' This is a really interesting quote from the bottom of p 91.

One helpful aspect is that google highlights the words you search making it easier to pinpoint the relevant information and skim read the text.

One annoying aspect of google books is that there is no option to copy and paste, making it hard to easily quote the opinions of different artists.

Good for finding out where to buy books and download the ebook version.

Books are too wordy - no examples illustrated with pictures.

How do you reference? Is it a book or a website?

Not being a physical Book it's hard to flip through quickly to see things that catch your eye.

There is a link on the page called 'About this book' Where you can access information on the book and reviews from other readers.

Good at finding relevant information from sources you would never have previously thought of or perhaps been able to access.

OUGD401 - Task 1 - Image Comparison

The two images we are comparing are both posters serving the purpose of first capturing the audience's attention and then communicating a clear message. 

The first image we looked at entitled 'The Uncle Sam Range', is a poster created in 1876 by New York based designers Schumacher & Ettlinger, advertising a cooking oven. The second set of images titled 'East African Transport Old Style' and 'East African Transport New Style' were taken from a series of posters entitled 'Colonial Progress Brings Home Prosperity' and were created by Adrian Allison for the Empire Marketing Board for display between December 1930-January 1931. 

Both Images are aimed at middle and upper-class white people with the concept that the individuals featured in the scenes and the people behind the posters are helping the world become a better place for the greater good of everybody. The 'Uncle Sam' poster is aimed at middle and upper class Americans as the scene on the poster depicts a room full of influential and wealthy individuals all sat around to dinner. 'Uncle Sam' illustrated in the middle of the Poster represents America hosting a dinner party to the rest of 'the world'. The excessive amount of patriotic American references creates a sense of propaganda suggesting America is the power house of the world, 'being able to feed everyone', and builds on the image of the 'American dream'. 

The second set of images also aimed at the middle and upper-classes of the western world, depict a 'before and after' scene of native individuals carrying and transporting goods across Africa on foot in the first image, and by boat in the second. The posters were created to promote trade and understanding between Empire countries, however the content seen within the images would today be considered extremely offensive. The images show a racial divide in society with the white man tying to impose Western Culture and socially engineering their country. The second image is different to the first one depicting a more 'civilised' and 'modern' scene of men in shorts working together to paddle and unload a  boat while in the background a truck transports people over a wooden bridge to deliver and transport goods. In the first image women and children are illustrated wearing traditional clothing and carrying heavy loads by foot over harsh terrain. These contrasting images are aimed to show progress created by Western men, encouraging investors back home to spend money on produce from these countries as like the title suggests, 'Colonial Progress Brings Home Prosperity.' 

All of the posters rely heavily on illustration to convey a clear message to the audience: 'Invest in this and your life will be better', however text is also used to illiterate the point. The first style of illustration is very detailed with a list of foods from across the world  written on a scroll illustrating the wide range of trade America has with other countries. It also paints a scene of affluence and prosperity with the finely dressed ladies and gentlemen (representing countries like England and the West) and the plushly decorated interiors. The date on the clock also relates to the American War of Independence (1775-1783) where America fought for independence from Britain to become it's own nation.

The second set of posters are in a different design style reminiscent of the 1920's. Their imagery shows a contrast between how the country was before civilised western individuals pioneered change and how it is now. In the first image the women and children look unhappy, dressed in 'inappropriate' attire for the task they're carrying out. The second shows just men, working collaboratively in more appropriate attire, led by a wealthy white man, indicating drastic change to that country with the help of the West. 

In conclusion, though these posters are both visually very different, they both propose the same message that by investing in what the poster is advertising your life will improve in some way. However each poster uses a completely different technique in persuading its viewers to do so. The 'Uncle Sam Range' depicts an image of wealth, happiness and prosperity that can be obtained with the purchase of the product. Whereas the two posters created by Adrian Allison suggest that by continuing to support the work of British white men in improving the quality of trade with other countries, your life will also improve as 'colonial progress' brings prosperity home with it.