Design Discourse 1

The Case for Brands
by the editors of the Economist

Key Points:
• brands
• advertising
• billboards
• McDonald's
• Budweiser instead of local tipple
• ditch nameless shirts for Gap
• prefer Marlboros to homegrown smokes
• pawn theory
• Naomi Klein author of No Logo
• brand advertising
• local alternatives
• consumer protection- a brand provided a guarantee of reliability and quality
• Amazon
• Evian
• Consumer trust is the basis of all brand values
• competition
• good marketing
• brands fade as tastes change- Nescafe has fallen, while Starbucks has risen
• Microsoft vs Apple
• Companies exploit people's emotional needs as well as their desires to consume
• Nike's- personal achievement
• Coca Cola's- carefree fun
• Story around their service or product
• Social cachet
• A failed advertising campaign, a drop-off in quality or a hint of scandal can all quickly send customers fleeing.



Here are some of the most famous and recognizable brands that we might see now a days or we used to see very much before. Many of these can be recognized from far away just because of the colors. Even little kids learn the McDonald's logo before they know how to really talk, they recognize it without problems. We know the Coca Cola, Disney, Heineken, and many others from miles away. Even if we just see the colors in something completely different we relate it to these brands.



These commercials and ads about PC vs. Macs have been very good. We recognize these characters and immediately connect them to these commercials. Now a days most of the people are going with Macs and if they do go with a PC they usually go for a Dell because it is a well known brand. Many people would think about it twice if they where to buy a brand that was not well known but was a lot cheaper. Here is a good example when the article says that it is all related to social cachet. We want the best products or better known brand names just to be more accepted and have a higher stand. This happens a lot more with car brands.



This is another example of what brands can do. Here we have the original Robitussin brand and the Walgreens brand. Both have the same thing and work the same way, but one is cheaper than the other. Many people might think that just because the Walgreens one is cheaper it will not do the same and just to go safe they might take the Robitussin and pay more. Brands play a big role now a days because we are surrounded by them. No one wants something that doesn't have a name, we all want a known brand. Same thing happens when we go buy for clothes. We might see a shirt very similar to the one we liked in Armani, but just because of the name we get the expensive one.

February 24, 2010

Important topics introduced tonight:

• De Stijl
• Gerrit Rietveld
• Theo van Doesburg
• Mondrian
• Kurt Schwitters
• EL Lissitzky
• Gerrit Rietveld
• Peter Oud
• J.J.P. Oud
• The Bauhaus
• Walter Gropius
• Johannes Itten
• Laszlo Moholy Nagy
• Herbert Bayer
• Jan Tschichold

The most interesting thing in tonight's class was the short movie about the Bauhaus. I found it interesting because of the clear and constantly changing images and music. The information given was also very interesting, since most of it was unknown to me. When the Bauhaus was first open half of the students where women, although they were confined to certain sections that they taught. This was impressing because is was very uncommon for women to go to school in that time. Their idea of less is more has been seen today all over with graphic design, architecture, industrial design, and basically anything we might see around us. I would have never thought that some of the things we use now a days, like the table lamps that are so common, where designed in that time. Their architecture, specifically in the second building they had, is very common in these times where everything looks very modern by using clear windows which allows people from outside see everything going on inside. Many buildings in big cities, such as New York, use same style of architecture that was used during the Bauhaus.

February 17, 2010

Important topics introduced tonight:

• Kasimir Malevich
• Suprematism - school of painting using only pure form and color.
• Suprematism- creates a theoretical model for an abstract visual language where form is understood as a set of forces soon aligned with those of revolution.
• Constructivist Movement
• Alexander Rodchenko
• Constructivism
• photomontage
• Salomon Tellingater
• EL Lissitzky
• The Steinberg Brothers
• Theo van Doesburg
• Gerrit Rietveld
• Cubism


In tonight's class we talked about the works of Rodchenko and Gustav Klutis. I was very interested in both of their works and how they mixed photography with type and still gave their message. In the work of Gustav Klutis I liked the mixture of the cut out images and how he played with the text. He used techniques of collage, which I have always found very interesting because there is always something to look at. Rodchenko's works where a little more laid back and had more white spaces, but he still played with the idea of collage and images. He used several techniques that are still used today, such as: showing simultaneous action, superimposing images,using extreme close-ups and perspective images, and rhythmic repetition of an image for
effect. Throughout the entire class we also saw many other artist's works that had the same techniques including strong diagonals and forms.

February 10,2010

Important topics introduced tonight

• Pictorial Modernism
• Plakastil
• Sachplakate
• Lucian Bernhard
• Cubism replaced a rendering of natural appearances with purely invented form.
• Lucian Bernhard
• Hans Rudi Erdt
• Julius Gipkens
• Joseph Leyendecker
• Mythical Realism - promoted patriotism at all levels of society through national symbol full of realism.
• Futurism- voiced enthusiasm for war, danger, and the machine age,
• DADA- “Replace man’s logical non- sense with illogical nonsense”.
• Stephane Mallarme
• Guillaume Apollinaire - Closely associated with the Cubist helped define its principles.
• simultaneity: text playing several roles at once both visual and verbal. Poets began considering the arrangement of words on a page as much as the words themselves when making poetry.
• Synthetic Cubism
• Filippo Marinetti
• Avant-garde poets of the 1910s became the graphic designers, teachers, and systematic theorists of the 1920s and 1930s.
• Duchamp
• Propaganda Art
• Kurt Schwitters
• Andre Breton- emerged as a new leader. Believed DADA had lost its relevance.
• Automatism- A pure psychic exercise intended to express verbally or visually the true function of thought “dictated” by the absence of all control exerted by reason.
• Max Ernst
• Rene Magritte
• Salvador Dali
• Man Ray


In tonight's class we discussed the works of Surrealists Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, which I find very interesting. I like Dali's works because to really understand them you have to look closely and analyze every little detail and even like that many times it is not easy. The entire Surrealist movement is actually interesting, especially their works. In class we also saw various posters and works of other times that called my attention such as the posters of Uncle Sam that became very popular and still are very popular today.

January 27,2010

Important topics introduced tonight:

• Victorian Period- no design philosophy
• Chromolithography- drives culture towards commercialism
• Louis Prang
• John Gamble
• Monotype-compose typographic layouts with a keyboard
• Thomas Nast- father of American political cartooning
• Development of illustrated newspapers from broadsheets
• John Ruskin & William Morris- believed that role of the artist/designer had no imposed boundaries
• Total design- art + craft = beautiful utilitarian objects
• Art Noveau-Influences
• Alphonse Mucha- carried art noveau to it's zenith
• Toulousse Latrec- french painter and designer
• Main focus of communication has the detail
• Modern art posters are the birth of art noveau
• Jan Toorop
• Jugendstil & Sezessionstil
• Open Space- poster for first Secessionist Exhibition
• Glascow School
• Peter Behiens- New objectivity
• Edward Johnson- Railway Type

In today's class I noticed that we all get inspiration from past artist's or older times. This happened during Art Noveau. It is interesting how the oldest thing, such as the Illuminated Manuscripts inspired many artist's long after that. I really liked learning about the posters and how they influenced communication, especially when it came to advertising products or shows, etc. I was impressed to see that the General Electric logo was designed in this time. I really would have thought it was made long after this time. The other fascinating thing is that the logo still is pretty much the same, maybe a few changes in some areas, but in general it seems pretty similar. It's not like some logos that they are good for a certain time and after that they have to redesign then and basically change all of their things. This one stayed and it does not look old or boring as some do, it could actually stay for very long and work with any period, I think.

January 20, 2010

Important topics introduced tonight:

• Symbolic forms suggest early humans did not simply record their needs and activities but also placed value on the representation of these ideas.
• Words represent unspoken thought.
• Petroglyphs/ Ideographs: reduced to the point resembling letters.
• Egyptian experimentation when writing their texts. Introduction to hierarchy
• Egyptian innovations triggered the development of the alphabet and graphic written communication in Phoenicia and Greco- Roman world.
• Greeks adopted and refined Phoenician alphabet. They determined the direction of reading.
• Greek alphabet fathered Etruscan,Latin, and Cyrillic alphabets.
• Romans finalized our our 26 letter alphabet.
• Christian belief in sacred religious writings became the primary impetus for the preservation and making of books.
• A more refined uncial and half evolves in the earliest manuscripts during the Dark Ages. Intent for faster writing and more legibility.
• First type printed by Gutenberg was based on "textura" from Gothic Manuscript.
• Albrecht Durer
• Six Historical Categories of Type.
-Old Style Roman
-Italic or Cursive letter form
-Transitional Period
-Modern Period
-Egyptian or Slab Serif
-Sans Serif

I found it very interesting to learn how exactly type came to be what it is now a days. Personally I'm not a big fan of type, but I still like learning about it's history and how they got to us. I never would have never thought that to get out a new idea the scholars would just do it and publish it. With this they would receive ideas and feedback about what they did. They would also see what worked better for the public and any other person that might read it.