Global warming isn't a buzz word for me anymore. I know what it means, and I know what I can do about it. Being a designer gives me the power to affect change. And if I choose to do (which I already I am) I would have made my contribution to nature's protection. As I always believe, it's the little things that make a difference. Every step counts.
2. Isolating
Yes we are all community and feedback is critical for any kind of personal or professional development. I love and crave feedback. But when it comes to designing, I work best when I have that feedback, sit on the drawing board and interpret it for what my instincts say would be the best solution. I don't like doing what others think looks good or works well. I like doing what I think looks fabulous. So unless someone gives me critical feedback AFTER they have really looked at my work. I will listen. Or I'm just going to pretend to listen.
3. Effortless right
For some people designing comes naturally. Whereas for others, we have the talent, they just need to be honed. The best designs I have made have come effortlessly, when I didn't go crazy over the brief or had a panic attack the night before. And most often I fail to see that.
4. Lucky me
I am lucky to be surrounded by such an immensely talented pool of designers around me who in their own special way have tremendously influenced me - and not just in design terms. In these last six months I have learnt more than I did in three years in college.
5. Type-a-holic
Typography is by far the most fascinating aspect of design. And I've only just begun to explore. The scope just 26 alphabets have is infinite. It's even more fascinating than watching a juggler juggle 5 balls!
6. Push and shove
I need to be pushed to the limit. I need to be pressurized to stay up surviving on unreasonable amounts of caffeine and working. I work best under pressure. That's when I produce my best work (apart from the few effortless rare moments).
7. Instinct-ally
Every time you have a question that you think you don't know the answer to. Trust your instinct. It is right, every single time. And it ALWAYS has an answer. If in doubt, close your eyes, then open and ask the question again. You will have an answer. And this doesn't only mean life, etc. it means your designing too!
8. Coffee-not-so-nated
The sleepless nights resulted in sleepy days which forced me to drink that brown drink in the cafeteria. The coffee in the cafeteria is downright awful. They should just stop serving it. My attempt to like it was to add an extra shot of espresso. It still tasted disgusting. Hence I can safely come to the conclusion, that the coffee I make is the best for me. It is fabulous and delicious and undescribeable. And of course there is Costa when I'm lazy.
9. Ani-patient-ated
I envy those who use flash and can animate. I have tried and failed several times. The work is just mediocre. I have no patience for it. It's just not my thing. It is an art to be able to animate and use motion graphics. I'm downright jealous.
10. Creditry
We are all capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for. Try it a hundred times (with or without hair-pulling frustration). The hundredth time you will know how good you are. And without that confidence you cannot be a successful person, let alone a graphic designer.
Please note: A lot of the ideas below are represented in a global as well as Indian context.
Advertising has almost become the crutch of urban society whereby absence of which would leave a vacuum in our lives. We witness innumerable advertisements daily, each of them having a direct or an indirect impact and influence on our thought process and our lifestyle. Evolution of media over the years teamed with liberalization has lead to the development of strong individual ideas and perceptions about media itself.
People don’t blindly believe what they see anymore. What we question and analyze (maybe even over-analyze) about the media today was unheard of a decade ago. Several media theories have emerged discussing how the role and importance of advertisements have changed over time. The bottom line is that people today are well-equipped to think for themselves and form clear-cut opinions about everything around them. Since advertisements target a large audience, their understanding is open-ended. Interpretation of each is left completely (and almost without choice) to each person’s beliefs, values, biases and judgement. This liberal thought process has led to drastically conflicting viewpoints wherein the producer (of the ad) is left almost helpless against the newly formed beliefs of society.
Yet while there is a media boom, it has brought with it several negative implications. The primary function of advertisement, traditionally, is to introduce a wide range of consumer goods to the public and thereby support the free-market economy. But that is clearly not its only role anymore. Today, the meaning of advertisement has changed. It is an umbrella term whereby it performs a number of promotional functions. Advertisements assume certain characteristics which are less directly connected to selling. Advertisers try to manipulate people into buying a way of life as well as goods. It aims to create not just a want, but a need for the product. To accomplish this, several advertisers go to the extent of creating an illusion of the real world to the masses, depicting what the ‘ideal’ world should be like and creating a want for things the consumer might not even need. And the consumer, despite his/her better judgement gets influenced by these media messages and ends up purchasing products/services shown as a ‘must have’. So a lot of the advertisements are fooling people by creating unnecessary ‘wants’.
India, a country still widely run by its traditions, has also somewhat matched up to the global society, not being far behind in the media revolution. Nevertheless, we have our share of advertisements that live up to the statement ‘truth in advertising is a misnomer’.
Each brand, in an attempt to beat competition, comes up with new creative solutions to reach the top. While creativity has brilliant results, it has also led to advertisements creating an ‘illusion’. This illusion deals with the media portraying the world unrealistically. A lot of advertisements are ‘larger than life’. While some may argue that this strategy is needed to sell the product, it crosses the fine line of having the ‘big picture’ to being unreal. Advertisements now a days show almost irrational and unethical images which create wrong notions among the audience resulting in confusion of reality.
The media today is very crowded and a million messages are thrown at people each day. Successful advertising involves breaking the clutter otherwise the advertisement is just like a ship at sea in the night. Thus, advertising is complex, requires a lot of understanding and of course experience. With an annual growth of 6% in the advertising world for the last three years and a yearly budget of Rs. 10,000 crore, the competition in India has reached a new level. Each brand, in an attempt to beat this competition, comes up with new creative solutions to reach the top. This results in a plethora of advertisements flooding the five primary media forms, i.e. print, television, radio, internet and outdoor.
Like the clichéd two sides to a coin, there is good and bad advertising among the millions out there. And it is not a very difficult task to distinguish between the two.
An analysis of the good and bad advertisements aids in understanding which elements make a good advertisement and which ones make a bad advertisement. It also says how the advertising agency thinks and functions while making a particular advertisement. It involves studying everything, right from the models used to endorse the product to the tagline used to the size (print) or duration (TVC) of the advertisement.
“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself” David M. Ogilvy
Good advertising is not open to interpretation. It means the same thing to whoever reads it, anywhere in the world. If it is good it is good. If it works it works.
Advertising is a tease. How good or bad it is depends on the knowledge you have of it and it is practised at ad agencies, clients and the marketplace. It is like the snake in the Garden of Eden, who sold the apple to Eve to entice Adam to eat the forbidden fruit! So how good was the advertising strategy of the serpent to be able to sell his apple, despite the consequences? I say this just as David Ogilvy in his book Ogilvy on Advertising said I do not regard advertising as an entertainment, but as a medium of information. When I write an ad, I don't want you to tell me that it is creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. Unfortunately, today's advertising has gotten to be more entertaining, and thus it is often hard to tell what companies are advertising.
Good ad
Brand: Monster.com
Product: Online job search engine
Agency: J Walter Thompson
Medium: TVC
Country: India
A good advertisement is one which has a sound message, helps build brand recall, creative flair and is well produced. A good advertisement can be judged on the basis of highlighting the features of the product, clearly defining the target audience, following the company’s segmentation and how catchy it is. With a rise in the number of advertising agencies in India, companies like Ogilvy & Mather, J. Walter Thompson, LOWE-Lintas, the creative work we witness is immense.
It is an advertisement with a difference, crisp and to the point. It is a superb idea and very well executed. It has an important element of humour which immediately grabs your attention. The advertisement grabs your attention from the first shot and intrigues the viewer to know the end. Again an unused concept brilliantly utilized to show that, as opposed to the other job finding websites, Monster.com promises to find you not just a job, but the ‘right job’. This is also the USP of the product. The message is crystal clear and they use a mascot, a monster like their name, to show their physical absence in reality as it is a website. They clearly target professionals in all fields and do not limit themselves to any one particular job type. In terms of creativity the advertisement is par excellence and one of a kind. While some may argue that the features of the product are well defined if not with excessive clarity, they divulge just the right amount of details to get their target audience interested to actually log on to the internet and know more. Monster.com along with J. Walter Thompson has maintained their image of originality and creative talent at its best.
Bad ad
Brand: Fair and Lovely Product: Fairness cream Agency: Lowe Medium: TVC Country: India
One of the most controversial advertisements on Indian television, Fair & Lovely has always been the target for negative publicity, with the Indian masses roaring against its unethical claim – being fair is being superior. India being a primarily dark-skinned populated country, the whites are seen as ‘better off’. This dissatisfaction of having a tanned complexion, and the advertisements showing that fairness leads you to success and superiority, has to led to Indians having a low self-esteem and image. Advertisements like Fair & Lovely further give fuel to this mindset surpassing all ethics and morality.
The shots when the girl had dark complexion is shown through grey and white dull filters. Connoting that life seems dim depending on your skin colour. It was only once she used the fairness cream and sent her audition tape, did she get noticed. The advertisement claims she got noticed because of her bright looks. The filters immediately change to vibrant tones of pink and blue indicating that one you become fair, your life also changes for the better. The woman landed the fabulous job because of her fair skin, which indirectly says that, if you don’t have fair skin you won’t get a good job. So the pre-requisite for getting a good job is not your skill or ability, but your skin colour. The advertisement is also implying that women have low self-esteem with regard to their colour and need something as superficial as a fairness cream to give them confidence to apply for and get a good job. This is almost as good as saying, having dark skin, which majority Indians have, equals being unsuccessful, having low-self esteem and a dull, uninteresting life. While being fair implies success, and an eventful life.
The brand is inducing in people the belief that being the dark skinned race that we are is equivalent to being inferior and being fair means being superior. The people who selected the girl for the job were men. Doesn’t this say that men judge women, at least a large part, by their looks? Would they have selected her if she wasn’t so fair? Questions like these are open-ended and can be used against the brand. Their tag line reads ‘making life brighter’; a highly superficial statement clearly stating using Fair & Lovely will make your life better. Being fair hence successful means being praised and called worthy by your family. What about the millions out there who are dark? They should lose all hope for getting a good job and never being the apple of their family’s eye just for the simple reason they have dark skin. This advertisement creates a most futile assumption about fair skin and makes the millions watching it think they are inferior to their fair neighbour. The advertisement creates an illusion stating that they won’t be accepted (in society/ a good job) or successful unless they use Fair & Lovely. It’s as good as saying that there is no place in this world for dusky skin, and this plain wrong and unethical.
These are just 2 examples of the way advertising can be so pure in its meaning and so misleading and ethically wrong. Ken Garland's manifesto states very clearly and simply what I, and every other designer around the globe wants to scream out and sums up our concern as a community in this document. The line between design and commercial work is so blurred, that we lose the real essence of design. Its design that makes up advertising and not advertising that makes up design. How we use wasteful amounts of energy and talent to sell trivial products where as a creative community it is out responsibility to put our abilities to better and more productive use. I think the manifesto is a self-explanatory piece of work and very clearly states its agenda.
First Things First 2000 a design manifesto
manifesto published jointly by 33 signatories in: Adbusters, the AIGA journal, Blueprint, Emigre, Eye, Form, Items fall 1999 / spring 2000
foreword by Chris Dixon, Adbusters
introduction by Rick Poynor
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.
Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.
Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. 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. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.
We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.
In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
signed:
Jonathan Barnbrook Nick Bell Andrew Blauvelt Hans Bockting Irma Boom Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Max Bruinsma Siân Cook Linda van Deursen Chris Dixon William Drenttel Gert Dumbar Simon Esterson Vince Frost Ken Garland Milton Glaser Jessica Helfand Steven Heller Andrew Howard Tibor Kalman Jeffery Keedy Zuzana Licko Ellen Lupton Katherine McCoy Armand Mevis J. Abbott Miller Rick Poynor Lucienne Roberts Erik Spiekermann Jan van Toorn Teal Triggs Rudy VanderLans Bob Wilkinson
We watch brands on TV, posters, billboards and magazine ads. These are intended to make us desire the product. When we go to the supermarket, we actually come face to face with the product. And it is at this moment does packaging play a role. We see, touch, feel, smell and interact with the product. It is a sensory experience.
PACKAGING is a point of purchase communication that directly affects sales. The package has 3 seconds to grab our attention, after that its lost in the sea of a million other products.
So packaging has to be attractive but not hurt the eye, tell a story, be different, be relative, a suitable size, shape, have utility, be environmentally friendly and not line the waste bin. Cereal in oval shaped boxes is the perfect example of packaging that is not functional at all. As after we notice the beauty of the package, we pick it up and ponder whether it would be easy to store, handle and use.
Packaging is not less or more important than branding as bad packaging equals an unsuccessful brand. What's the point of spending millions on your branding and not even half on your packaging? The last thing any brand wants is a disappointed consumer.. and that usually happens when the packaging falls short of what the brand promises.
Consumers today are essentially aware of the green phenomena. We all want eco-friendly products and packaging. With brands facing people who want real answers when asked about waste, they have to adopt green packaging. This term is as simple as it sounds - using environmentally friendly material to pack the product which has minimal waste and sometimes even re-usability. Dettol, a very popular and successful soap brand in India, has the initial plastic liquid hand wash bottle for sale. Then they have bags of the liquid soap available to refill your already purchased bottle.
CELESTIAL SEASONINGS, a US based tea company, uses 100% recycled paperboard (35% post-consumer material) to print their boxes. They don't have strings on their tea bags because.. "Their unique pillow–style tea bag is the result of their commitment to doing what's best for the environment. Because these natural fibre tea bags don't need strings, tags, staples or individual wrappers, we're able to save more than 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year! They practice Ethical Trade and have had relationships with many growers around the world for more than 30 years, and it’s very important to them that workers are treated fairly and with respect, and that farming techniques support environmental health and economic growth. The growers are their partners, and together, they ensure the botanicals Celestial Seasonings purchases are collected or harvested with minimal impact on the environment, while local jobs and businesses are nurtured. Their new packaging displays a special “Ethical Trade” logo with copy that explains their commitment to sustainable harvests and fair wages. They've practised this philosophy since their inception, and are proud to let consumers know of their commitment to ethical trading practices."
This goes a little off the packaging subject, but overall they are an ethical company and practise their beliefs as well.
Then there is ARBOR TEAS, who "teamed up with a group of graduate students studying Industrial Ecology at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources Center for Sustainable Systems to evaluate the environmental impact of their previous packaging and look at greener alternatives. Their previous packaging involved a combination of tin-plated steel canisters (an old-standby in the tea industry) and glassine-lined paper bags. As it turned out, the steel tins they used were no friend of the environment, but their paper bags were actually pretty good. In response to this news, they replaced our steel tin with a recyclable, parchment-lined paperboard canister. It’ll keep your tea safe and sound while generating less than one-fifth of the carbon emissions of the traditional tea tin (in addition to less air and water pollution)!
As they went through the process of investigating greener packaging options, they were surprised, frustrated and saddened by the limited availability of eco-friendly packaging that met the particular needs of their product. While their paperboard canisters are a major step in the right direction, their search for the greenest possible packaging is not over."
Then of course there is the CARBON FOOTPRINT (reminds me of my RSA stamps where I explored renewable energy sources and a way of greener living). "A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc.
The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent."
Since we're a global community now, and we are fully aware that we are causing serious damage to the earth, it is only vital to know how much energy we consume each day and what is our contribution to the environment. This helps to know where we can cut down and avoid waste.
There is also TRAFFIC LIGHT LABELING, closer to the subject of packaging. It is the system of using the colors of the traffic light to label their food and specify the nutrition contents of the food in a simple, easy to read format. Waitrose uses traffic light labelling for their products. Health conscious consumers squinting to read the fine print on the packaging isn't an unusual sight. So this system only makes it easier for the consumer to read, identify what he/she exactly wants to know and makes purchase faster, and thus easier.
Coming back to packaging. It is vital to be ethical and environmentally responsible for today and our future. To focus on aesthetics, PEARLFISHER is my favourite packaging design group. They have done work for some of the most famous brand such as Absolut and Waitrose. As they state on their wesbite, their designs are different. They are classy, extremely aesthetically appealing and have a very elegant look to them. It is also very unforgettable and are noticed instantly! Some samples of their work are presented below. When you see their work, it's easy to tell why they are a favorite.
What they don't do: Unethical Design - "We won’t work with brands that aren’t truthful about what they stand for, or which are willfully damaging life and the environment."
Another Limited Rebellion is an American design group upholding strong ethical and social philosophies.
They ask two very important questions:
Can someone make a living doing what they enjoy and affect positive change in the world? Could I create graphic design that upholds my deepest beliefs yet still be able to feed myself?
They aim to: • Provide high quality design for clients whose work benefits the communities in which they are located. • Work with clients who are not involved in the creation of cigarettes, alcohol, or weapons. • Work with companies who are not involved in a labor dispute nor are targets of a boycott for its labor or environmental practices. • Attempt to make designs that create a minimum of waste and do as little harm to the environment as possible. • Encourage clients to use environmentally sensitive printing processes and materials whenever applicable to a design. • Create pro-bono designs when possible for non-profit organizations with extremely limited resources. • Donate 10% of profits to non-profit organizations.
All of this is a monumental task, and they are an organization committed to achieving it. This can be seen in their work where they use recycled paper creating branding and print based communication for their clients.
Founded by Noah Scalin, a graduate of the NYU Tisch School of The Arts and a lifelong activist. Noah used his experience with youth marketing and passion for grassroots activism to create his own ethically driven firm.
Noah’s work at ALR has gained international exposure in over two-dozen books and is frequently featured in design publications, including How Magazine’s “Good Company” cover story Jan/Feb 2006. Noah also developed a course on socially conscious design for Virginia Commonwealth University and founded a long running community supported agriculture group in Richmond, Virginia.
The Paper Craneis a UK based design studio that offers design, photography and illustration services. The help promoting companies and organizations that enrich our lives without harming the earth.
They are continually making efforts to green up all aspects of the business, with the ability to provide greener print solutions for all forms of marketing literature. Including the use of recycled materials, paper with FSC certification, vegetable based inks, water based sealants and waterless printing.
Their new premises is within a sensitively restored wharf which, in its construction uses the most sustainable and eco-friendly materials and products. Along with the instillation of greener technologies to produce highly efficient energy from renewable sources.
They believe that coming face to face with the consequences of our previous actions is helping to make us more conscience of the long term and far reaching effects that human activity can have upon the earth. Reminding us of our interconnectedness with the world around us, a world which we too easily become disconnected from within our busy and increasingly urban life's.
My favorite from their design portfolio is a series of posters they did for Somerset PCT on Sexual health.
Researching for this task reminded me of my RSA project, where we spoke to stamp printers and paper companies who said using vegetable based inks, eco friendly paper, etc. were an expensive and not yet easily available methods. And then when I read about companies who have already employed such methods in their businesses I wonder why isn't every or almost every company thinking the same way and taking such a strong step? Isn't it our environment?
The approach of these two design studios are worth looking at and getting inspired from. It is only when organizations take stands such as these studios can there ever be any real change in the world. The comforting part is that at least some are taking steps, as only awareness isn't enough anymore.
“I'm not sure that I see life at all. What I do see is life within. I suppose you could call it the imagination. I'm rather unconscious of things around me... I don't know what these things are until I see them in an imaginative light - which is a bright light, without shade - a kind of inward sun.” – Janet Frame
