The Cultural Influence of Brands

The Cultural Influence of Brands

 This article is as offensive as it is clumsy. It panders to the reader as much as it apologizes for corporate greed and excess.

 My favorite selections from the reading:

 “In the culture of knowledge, everything seems knowable and everyone wants to know. From the vicarious experience of survival to a basic understanding of type capitalist system and its attendant marketing habits, people feel smart and informed. And guess what? They are.”

The author confuses awareness with intelligence. Yes, people know more, but they simply know, they do not comprehend — similar to the author, coincidentally.

 The author uses the term “cultural autism” in a poor attempt to anthropomorphize the corporation’s inability the interact with culture at the level that the general public does with ease. The act of attempting to make the reader empathize with a faceless, unfeeling, corporation — not even a specific corporation — by weaponizing a developmental disorder that primarily affects children and is a hot-button topic by itself is especially heinous, clumsy, and offensive.

 “In a culture that has rejected exploitation, has confronted inequity, and is striving for a utopian ideal of life, liberty, and happiness, sustainability has a huge cultural value.”

Uhhhhh, where is this utopia? Can I move there? Is it free? Can I bring my cat? In short, see: white privilege.

“The relationship between consumer and mass brands has decayed to such a point that the days of premium-price, high-margin branded products seems to exist only in our fantasy world.”

The author literally worked for Apple, leading teams for marketing efforts for launching the original iMac and iPhone.

On 9/11,”…it seemed like an attack on corporate America.” Why is it so far outside of the realm of possibilities for corporate America to be the target of 9/11? In the 20th century, American corporatism extended past its own borders into countries around the world, strengthening the ties between the United States and its now culturally dependent states. This form of force is known as “soft power” as opposed to hard power being that of military might (see: The Kitchen Debate.) This extension of American corporatism to other countries not only made them culturally dependent, but economically dependent as well. This is known as neocolonialism. One thing that I agree with the author on is that corporate America has lost its grip on culture, and now plays a reactionary role as opposed to one of creation and dispersion. Where we immediately diverge is that the author has sympathy for neocolonialist powers paying the price for overextending and diminishing liberty abroad (dragging its colonies into the mix) while I do not.

“…conservative money will be poured into maintaining a semblance of a status quo.” 

While I’m sure there are many examples of why this cheap shot is both true and false, the most relevant to my current state of mind can be seen here.

Hara, Manovich, & Lupton

Hara, Manovich, & Lupton

“The computer is not a tool, but a material … For any material to become a superb material, we need to purify its distinguishing attributes as much as possible. Asa. Material for modeling and carving, clay has endless plasticity, but that limitless plasticity is not unrelated to the material’s development. If it were filled with nails or other shards of metal, we wouldn’t be able to knead it to a usable consistency. These days it’s as if we’re kneading the clay until our hands bleed.”

Clay, like all other materials, is not usable by itself as Hara suggests. Only in conjunction with water, heat, and of course time is the material of value in conveying thoughts and ideas. Hara’s larger point remains correct however, that the medium of clay has been refined for thousands of years to where we are able to use it to great advantage, as well as have the connotations of the medium largely agreed upon across cultures. The computer, more specifically the screen, is in fact a material. 

Manovich sees “design operations” in a similar way:

“These operations can be compared to the different blocks of a Lego set. While you can make an infinite number of projects out of these blocks, most of the blocks will be utilized in every project, although they will have different functions and appear in different combinations. For example, a rectangular red block may become a part of a tabletop, part of a head of a robot, etc.”

This ties back into the medium of clay. A wad of clay can be a mug, a pot, a bust, etc. much in the same way a Lego can be whatever a the assembly of the blocks appears to create. These two materials however, do not operate independently. In order to achieve its final form, clay needs to be activated and hardened by heat. In order to facilitate joy and play, Lego requires the imagination of the user. The materials are only approximations of their final forms, much in the same way a vector illustration is only an approximation of its own, whether it be destined for the web or a poster. So while the industries that Manovich mentions begin to converge in their design languages and practices, they really have only been freed from the limitations of their former formats, and moved into a new one that’s agnostic of medium, the screen.

Relating our medium and practice (clay & fine art, Lego & children) to that of others’ is helpful in not only in furthering our understanding of our field, but also in enabling those outside to relate; an external-to-internal relationship that is exceeding rare in our field, which is focused more and more on output and immediacy. This is similar to Lupton’s observation that, “Design is becoming less inwardly directed and more socially directed.” I assume that this alludes to the heightened convergence of graphic design and social issues (which is by no means new, just more prevalent) and the “democratization” of design. As we talked about last week, technology has given graphic designers less control of the practice-at-large than we had before, not that we had too much to begin with. We cannot change or reverse engineer this situation, so we must adapt to it. Lupton states:

“The challenge for designers — a group that increasingly includes thoughtful users as well as professional typographers — is to disable the stylistic limitations of templates without forgoing the expanded access to the tools of communication.”

I agree with this, but other graphic designers may not. Many believe that the guidelines for our field: the grid, typography, color theory, etc. belong to graphic designers, but they do not. By commercializing these tools in the first place we forfeited our right their exclusivity. We’ve placed a monetary value on something that we value morally, and in an economy in which things are won by the lowest bidder, what right do we have to be mad that our practice is being sold for next to nothing?

Rock, Siegel, & Helfand

Rock

Rock initially describes the “design auteur”, — a parallel to that of the film auteur as supported by Sarris — as one who accomplishes three acts:

1. Demonstrates technical expertise

2. Has a stylistic signature that is visible of the course of several films

3. Shows a consistency of vision and interior meaning.

“Inner meaning must come from aesthetic treatment as much as from content.”

If the “client” provides content, then the client is a factor in determining the designer’s inner meaning. By associating your self with morally corrupt clients your designs become morally corrupt.

Rock later amends the second of these criteria, stating:

“The very scale of a cinematic project allows for a sweep of vision not possible in graphic design. Therefore graphic auteurs, almost by definition would have to have produced large, established, bodies of work in which discernible patterns emerge.”

What this method seems to ignore however is the fact that not all designers begin with the same ability with which to flourish and produce large bodies of work, especially ones that can be regarded as “established”. In the practice and study of graphic design, “established” work is synonymous with creators who had a surplus of personal agency, privilege, etc. as not only designers, but as humans. Knowing this, its no wonder Rock’s list of potential auteurs are all white men, save Yokoo and Greiman.

Rock continues on to weed down his list rather arbitrarily, cutting it down to only Bernard and van Toorn (wow). The work of these most of these men appears homogenous when compared to the rest of art and graphic design exist (which seems to be an exceedingly rare one in our field), and should all be disqualified based on the implication that the “stylistic signature” should be unique to the designer.

Rock seems to back track in the final section of his writing:

“If the ways a designer can be an author are complex and confused, the way designers have used the term and the value ascribed to it are equally so.”

More often than not, it is helpful to look outside of a practice in order to understand it more fully. In the instance of designer as author however, that may not be the case. We continue to draw analogies to other practices and their roles with hope that we will find clarification, but those with which we compare ourselves have also been enduring identity crises. Knowing this, attempts at drawing comparisons to practices that are not absolute such as the scientific method that Rock mentions are ultimately in vain.

 Siegel

“Data entry and customization options are the way prosumers grip this new generation of products. The templated mind hungers for customization and the opportunity to add their input.”

This was written in 2006, just prior to the institutionalization of social media. Youtube had yet to be bought by Google, Flickr had just been bought by a prosperous Yahoo, and MySpace existed. All these services have shifted dramatically in the 12 years since this article has been published, shifting from repositories representing a democratization of media and communication to a commodified media house with an identifiable class system, a service that’s worth more to data miners than its users, and a social network obsolete by a refusal to keep up with user and shareholder expectations. The free market ruined the promise of a democratized internet in many ways, but especially through the capitalization on user-generated content. In capitalizing on their users however, they opened the door for the practice of graphic design to continue on as a professional practice.

As a hierarchy (class system) within users began to emerge in social media, the return on investment for DIYing their own content began to diminish. Popular users have now swelled into LLCs, and smaller users have fallen by the wayside, enjoyably doodling in their small communities, but unable to truly flourish (a new underground?). As these startups join up with larger companies, and users turn into companies of their own, graphic design pervades this new economy, just as it did in advertising and marketing before. In the context of book covers, Siegel goes on to mention that marketing and design will continue their struggle for dominance, but in the new arena of the internet:

“A good book cover can still help sell books, but it is up against a lot more competition for the marketing dollar.”

Siegel additionally references money spent on influencing Google results, which is even more prevalent today, especially post Google’s YouTube and AdMob acquisitions and with new players like Facebook-Instagram and Amazon. Compounded with the “democratization” of graphic design tools, the arena of the internet appears to be hostile to our practice, leading to attempts at legitimization — justified or otherwise. Its interesting that graphic design thrives in anti-democratic settings.

 Helfand

Helfand sees the graphic designer’s relationship with the internet as a reaction to a technology, where prior to this technology was absorbed into our practice (desktop publishing, photo-type, moveable type, books, ink, paper, words). I think that this is still true today, as many designers choose to omit the medium altogether. Helfand (in 2001) believes that the internet has, “ridiculously preordained parameters”, which while less true today is true nonetheless. However, its benefits may outweigh its weaknesses. The internet was presented to us as defeating our expectations of media, having subverted time and space successfully. This victory is shallow however, as we see an increase in hostility towards one another as hate speech and indecency become not more occurent, but more visible, and we see a destruction of knowledge and intelligence instead of their creation and harvesting, seen in fake news and clickbait articles that spread virally through our digital space.

Heller & Lasn

Heller

“But within a very short period, as profits began to roll in, youth culture trend spotters expanded the range, thereby dulling the edge, of the psychedelic style.”

I haven’t heard trends related to blades before, but it makes a lot of sense to do so. The more a design trend is repeated, the less effective it becomes in terms of visual communication. The more a knife is used the less effective it becomes in cutting objects. An old, dull, knife is more dangerous than a new, sharp, one due to the amount of pressure that’s needed for it to perform; maybe there is another parallel to design trends here as well.

Lasn

“Choose it only if you’re certain the other options will corrode your soul and give you a bleeding ulcer, only if you know you are among the chosen few designers who hole Prometheus’s holy fire in your hands.”

Lasn implies that this sensation is rare, and maybe it was just a short time ago, but I feel as though a good majority of designers around my age are much more intent on creating work that falls in Lasn’s description of design than in a boring, corporate, definition. Also, with design, photography, marketing, etc. having entered a space of prosumerism, we’re seeing a “democratization” of these industries. To use the word “democratization” is to give this change a positive connotation, but in some ways its much closer to anarchy.

Wild & Scher

Wild

“So craft is about tactics and concepts, seeking opportunities in the gaps of what is known, rather than trying to organize everything in a unifying theory. One needs the ability to experiment. Experimenting… often described as playing around, demands judgement — it improves one’s sense of discrimination.”

Experimenting is to play, as finding “taste” is to fun. We experiment to better understand good and bad examples in practice, just as we play to have fun. I really enjoy this analogy, as I often describe the design process as play, even if it may not be joyful or fun in a traditional sense; process as play and product — effective or not —  as fun.

“Too personal, maybe, or too eccentric, their work resonates anyway, looks better, and better over time, and makes more sense.”

Most of the work and designers that we have discussed fall under this description. Their work may not have functioned or solved problems as the designer desired, but they were new approaches in their field. I couldn’t help but wonder, where were the boring, traditional, safe, designers and their work of the periods that we’ve looked at?

“The meaning of our work is connected to how it is made, not just ‘concepted’.”

The idea and concept of the designer is important to the creation of the work, but the design’s role in society, which is ultimately decided by society, is much more important. The designer is a person, as is the viewer. Since there are (hopefully) more viewers than designers, the perception and affects of the work become prioritized over the designer’s intent. This goes back to the argument of art v. design. If the work’s purpose and role in society originates and is defined by from the maker’s intent, then perhaps its art. If the work’s purpose and role in society originates and is defined by the viewer, then perhaps it is graphic design.

Scher

For someone who deliberately subtracts political commentary from their work, Scher has a divine/opinionated/partisan outlook on design and its culture and history.

“Instead we take baby steps and mutter, ’Too much style and no substance,’ because we learned that line from higher-ups when we were hot young flashes at the bottom.”

I’m feeling personally attacked! Not really, but I’m plenty guilty to delivering this critique maybe too frequently. So what if a design is too heavy on the style end of the equation? If we’re to understand play as process, maybe playing in substance is okay too.

“Very often when we look at the work of our great graphic designer institutions, we find that so much of their truly important, innovative work was produced over a relatively short period of time: five years, ten years, flashes in the pan.”

Potentially depressing and I don’t want to think too hard about it! Also, of all people, Paula Scher, someone with a 40+ year career in design is saying this.

Weingart & McCoy

Weingart

At the beginning of his piece, Weingart states, ”The only way to break typography rules was to know them.” I’ve heard this said many times through my time in school, and agreed with it more recently. What I didn’t realize was that Weingart originated this idea. It seems odd, to spend time learning a practice only to later actively reject in your work in order to reach the same goal, but this is seen in many forms of art, which Weingart believes typography is. The idea that one can break the rules of typography without first learning the rules and what they stand for is akin to a me throwing a lump of clay on the wheel and calling it a flower pot (note: I am not trained in ceramics).

McCoy

“Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture emerged alongside the study of graphic design history as influence on American graphic design students…But the addition of vernacular imagery and colors [in New Wave design] reflects postmodern architecture’s discovery of popular culture”

Is that what Venturi attempted to talk about?

McCoy’s piece is largely an observation of where New Wave and the works that succeed and are related to it fall in terms of Modernism v. Post-Modernism. She mentions that the use of text and image is “baroquely Modern,” with which I’m inclined to agree. Even though New Wave habitually breaks principles and rules of design and typography, it still acknowledges them. This acknowledgment of customs while rejecting them is what causes me to err on the side that New Wave comes at the tail end of the Modernist movement. The actions of New Wave in rejecting the rules once learned is seen in their use of illustrative elements such as, “unmannered, hand-drawn, or vernacular forms.”

The period that immediately follows New Wave is described by the preface as “‘Legibility Wars’ of the 1990s.” With her piece being written in 1988, McCoy anticipated this reaction to New Wave as she stated, “Copy is often treated as just that — undifferentiated blocks of words…” New Wave embraced the text and manipulated its formal qualities accordingly, but towards the end of the 1980s, this liberal use of letters waned. Why did New Wave receive such harsh reaction from mainstream designers who proceeded to create type that is strictly letters-forming-words-forming-sentences forming-paragraphs, which we see today across the digital landscape; dry, milk-toast, typography.

Introduction

In the intro, the part that best provoked thought in myself was Armstrong’s thought that,

“...artists like El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Herbert Bayer, and László Moholy–Nagy viewed the authored work of the old art world as shamefully elitist and ego driven. In their minds, such bourgeois, subjective visions corrupted society. They looked instead to a future of form inspired by the machine—functional, minimal, ordered, rational. As graphic design took shape as a profession, the ideal of objectivity replaced that of subjectivity.”

To me, the support of the technological advances of societies which were built upon inequity by those associated with the Bauhaus is inherently elitist. While the men’s intent of creating a new school of thought utilizing these strides in technology and thought in order to produce media that is truly neutral, impartial, and objective is admirable, the ability to use this technology and to repurpose its essence to execute this goal is indicative of societal privilege. This privilege and the elitism with which they are opposed are inseparable.

There is also dissonance in the group’s belief that the ethos of machine and technology can be used as a tool in order to create media that is truly neutral and objective. Media cannot exist in a vacuum; the relationship between the media and its creator is not monogamous. Media is immediately interpreted, remixed, misconstrued, etc. in a number of ways outside of the its original intent. It is impossible to create media that
is truly objective, neutral, impartial, etc. Additionally, the creation of the works of this collective is a subjective reaction to that of what is considered “the old art world” in this text.

In Marinetti’s piece I thought the visual manner in which he spoke was very interesting in that it seems to perform the work of a graphic designer, but inverted. Where he uses speech/prose to illustrate a point, a graphic designer typically uses image/ illustration to “spell out” their argument whether that be a theoretical work, or the branding of an organization. I also thought that Rodchenko’s analogy between engineers and artists was interesting. Where an engineer seeks solace in their work, the artist seeks labor — the same being true in reverse.