Seminar in Design Response 1

No Logo by Naomi Klein

•              Brand management – marketing and product design as a means to meet the casual clothing wants and needs of consumers
•       Outsourcing manufacturing/production of goods
•       Product – made in factory
•       Brands – bought by consumer
•       True values by brands – idea, lifestyle, and attitude
•       Knowledge economy
•       Super brand – costly and constant managing
•       Synergies
•       Branding to replace production
•       Nike – no-limit spending
•       “Global” teenager
•      “Trade secret” of factories (no logos)

The article No Logo by Naomi Klein examines how modern businesses over the last 20 years has moved their focus from physically manufacturing their products to contracting foreign factories to create their products.  This allows companies to limit spending on actual goods and to focus their budgets on mass brand marketing.  Companies today create an aura about their brand, which becomes ingrained in every consumer.  Companies like Nike want to create a certain image or status that affects how consumers view and buy products.  Creating an image also tells the consumer how to act, dress, and what his or her desires are.  Companies do so buy the Nike philosophy of “no-limit spending,” which literally is what it sounds like (203).   Companies who now outsource labor can create about a 400% increase in stocks which can be spent all on commercials, advertisements, logos, shipping, etc… These ideas all affect the consumer, especially when companies use celebrities or icons in their campaigns.  The idea that companies careless about their workers and will sacrifice anything to create a standard of living is manipulative, but it is we the consumer who should be able to see through marketing gimmicks.

Branding the Individual by Jane Pavitt

·      The consumer defines the brand and the brand defines the consumer (interdependent relationship)

·      Doing the shopping – provide provisions for family (mundane)

·      Leisure shopping – goods give us identity in world (fun/careless)

·      Shopping around – purchases that involve time and investigation (careful)

·      Shopping/consumption as a way of communication

·      Commodity Self – buying an identity

·      Status by product (no longer by occupation or intelligence)

·      Authentic self

·      Consumer culture – creates assigned gender roles, class and ideas of sexual roles

·      Modern consumer – buys things for emotional and social meanings that embody us, not out of rational or practicality

·      Price defines status

·      Collective taste

·      Conspicous consumption

In Branding the Individual Jane Pavitt examines the relationship between consumer and popular brands.  It is often argued that the consumer has free choice in what they choose to purchase and how they use goods to present themselves.  Although this may be true, brands often manipulate consumer thought and desires with marketing strategies and the ideas brands create for public image.  Brands will create a certain status through popular styles, materials used, and the price of certain products.  People who are unable to spend frivolously on designer or popular products are cast down peers as not being “cool”.  As consumers we use products to define ourselves and as a way to communicate to others who we are by simply what we wear, listen to, eat, etc…This issue divides people into classes or social status, where we no longer appreciate a person’s accomplishments but give praise and value to the person driving the most expensive car.  Although people will not want to admit we are being manipulated and controlled by big businesses the affects of consumer prejudices are prevalent in society, especially in youth cultures.  In youth culture peers tend to be harsher towards one another in their “collective” groups, where material goods sometimes give value to friendships and status.  This way of marketing that affects mere children is a way to get people to start thinking as a consumer as early as possible in life to be a shopping machine.

Fabien Baron by John Seabrook

·      “Let oxygen in” – expression for too much textual cluttering

·      The feeling of having arrived at the center of the action and finding it very still

·      “The Club”

·      “Moving forward” – the past is the past

·      Txt as graphics

·      Modern – clean, young, and direct

·      Philosophy  - simple, direct, honest, and “forward”

John Seabrook follows Art Director/renowned designer Fabien Baron, having a first encounter look at how Fabien views the world, works, and thinks.  Fabien’s specialty is “letting the oxygen in” magazines and advertisements.  His thinking if viewed as “forward”, fresh, and smart.  As head Art Direct for Bazarr magazine Fabien interacts with all kinds of artists.  He has created a group “The Club” that brings his friends and other artists together.  He states that he “wants to bring designers and architects and artists together to create a movement, or a philosophy – a certain kind of look (like impressionist did)” (75).  Fabien believes art and design should be simple, direct, honest, and “forward”.  He states several times in the article that he does not want to go back in time, which the past is the past and we should move forward to bigger and greater things.  Designers should figure out the meaning and essence of today not of the past.