Month: November 2019

The mainstream vs. underground concept is relevant in contemporary design. Heller indicates that the mainstream is a progressive entity due to changes underground culture established by some designers in outsiders (Heller 101). In this way, the contemporary society tweaks the underground culture with the trending issues, and slowly the mainstream becomes the trend itself. Most of the culture is adopting commercial advertisement design.

The design of commercial advertising such as Ketchup uses both visual, linguistic signs and coded iconic message to promote its products. In this way, it fits in the mainstream as the underground captures the consumers by engaging them to their values in the market (Kumar et al. 301). Hence, the underground realm of outsiders who focuses on the design comes out with their own way of creating an advertisement or poster that might either criticize or promote a product (Screti 8). Therefore, the punk and grunge movement unhinges the dominant mannerism and methods used in the mass culture to embrace almost everything.

The underground design that influences the work at hand is leeching off the alternative of culture. The reason is that the underground has been appropriated from the mainstream. In contemporary society, it is termed as “culture jamming,” but in the past decades, it was known as “avant-gardists” (Heller 100). It will shape the mainstream through the fundamental forms associated with advertising the commercials through engaging the art into the advertising aspect. It occurs that not only was the futuristic and constructive art masterwork designed due to cultural change and trending events but involved advertising about new ideas (Clements 27). Hence, in shaping the mainstream, the promotion of commercial advertisement of products expands further to the visual language of an edge through social media as an adopted mainstream of advertising.

 

Works Cited

Clements, Paul. The Creative Underground: Art, Politics and Everyday Life. Routledge, 2016.

Heller, S. “The Underground Mainstream.” Armstrong, H.(Comp.), Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the field (2008): 98-101.

Kumar, V., et al. “Undervalued or overvalued customers: capturing total customer engagement value.” Journal of service research13.3 (2010): 297-310. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247744906_Undervalued_or_Overvalued_Customers_Capturing_Total_Customer_Engagement_Value/link/55a0ff1908ae967fb3ea8758/download

Screti, Francesco. “Counter-revolutionary art: OBEY and the manufacturing of dissent.” Critical Discourse Studies 14.4 (2017): 1-23. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/35065119/Counter-revolutionary_art_OBEY_and_the_manufacturing_of_dissent?auto=download

 

OCT 28TH:

Humans and technology are thought to have a symbiotic relationship with each other. Technology and media are meant to help humans do things that they cannot normally do. The media is meant to deliver a message to the people using technology that can spread the same message across the world. If you are sending a letter, the letter is just a piece of paper, but what is written is an extension of your personality. If you are writing a book, the book is just a collection of paper put together, but it is your voice that is found throughout the book. However, not everything that we create will benefit us in the long term.

Technology and media work for us, but one day it may be possible that it will replace us in describing the messages we want to convey without us. Since technology does what we cannot do as well as a machine or at all, we use it as a form of progress. Despite this, technology does not some developing after we have enough help from them. It is meant to solve one question, “How do we make the task more efficient?” . After a while, the only way for technology to keep solving that question is to do the task entirely on its own. We can see this today with the developments of self checkout in places like grocery stores that aim to make the user experience quicker and easier, but they take jobs away from regular cashiers who cannot keep up. Another example may be the advanced testing of drones that aim to eventually replace mailmen and women in bringing your mail to your door.

Overall, the development of electric age technology has more of a negative impact in my opinion because of the long term effects of developing machines as smart as we are. As people, and even more so as designers, technology should be something that we tell what to do. As media is an extension of our voice, technology should not do anything to change that.

NOV 4TH:

Here we see a target ad that seems to be a sale for back to school products. We see four children, and we can see that two of them are white. This ad is trying to convey that it does not matter who you are, there are back to school stuff for all kids alike. (https://frequent-ads.com/target/target-weekly-ad-L9OtbIrojN-0)

Here we see an old navy add that is very similar to the target ad. We have a group of four people collecting gifts for black friday. What makes this one somewhat controversial is the use of pairing black and white people as couples.Especially since it seems the couple, or seemingly close friends, on the right are still teenagers. (https://9to5toys.com/2018/11/05/old-navy-black-friday-ad-50-off-sitewide-cardholder-benefits-1-socks-more/)

Our last ad is a billboard created by verizon to advertise their brand. We see a large group of diverse workers of many races of both men and women, working together to help bring you quality cell phone experience. If that is actually true is another story entirely, but for the purposes of the ad, it has shown that you can rely on all of these people to have a strong network. (https://flic.kr/p/5iHYmU)

HM site Integrated nonintimate and Integrated intimate 
Versace ad controversial 
Valentino ad 
Jonnie Walker ad some models appear to be ethnic but it’s hard to tell, also placed in back of ad

 

 

Benetton Group – Unhate Campaign

The campaign features a range of world leaders kissing, including the likes of Obama, Merkel and Sarkozy. According to the company behind the ad, the theme focuses on the kiss as it’s a universal symbol of love. The ad ran across many countries on large billboards during its 2011 launch which as you can imagine caused a lot of raised eyebrows. This wasn’t the first time the group had launched controversial ads before, in fact, their previous ads showed a priest and nun kissing. Controversy for this ad campaign arose in many different ways. The first was the use of the world leaders without their consent. In fact, one of the ads features Pope Benedict XVI kissing a top Egyptian imam which was quickly removed after being condemned by the Vatican.

Lung Cancer Alliance USA 

recently unveiled a series of controversial service announcements proclaiming that just about everybody “deserves to die”, if they have lung cancer. Intended to challenge those who believe lung cancer victims deserve to suffer because they’ve brought their illness upon themselves, LCA and Laughlin Constable created a series of advertisements that tackle the bias and stigma attached to those battling this atrocious disease. Hit the thumbs for a look at these disputable ads used by Lung Cancer Alliance USA. And, peep this crazy video found below.

British ice cream manufacturer Antonio Federici

hit the news headlines again with a new print advertising campaign banned because of religious sensitivities. The 2010 campaign for Gelato Italiano shows a heavily pregnant woman dressed as a nun standing in a church holding a tub of ice cream, with the text, “Immaculately Conceived … ICE CREAM IS OUR RELIGION”.

In another ad from the campaign two male priests are poised for a kiss with ice cream, with the text, “We believe in salivation”.

UK’s Advertising Standards Authority, Antonio Federici said the idea of “conception” represented the development of their ice cream. They said their decision to use religious imagery stemmed from their strong feelings towards their product (they cited the text “ICE CREAM IS OUR RELIGION”) and also from their wish to comment on and question, using satire and gentle humour, the relevance and hypocrisy of religion and the attitudes of the church to social issues. They believed the small number of complaints the ASA had received represented a very small proportion of the readership of the publications. They did not believe offence had been so deeply felt as to affect their right, as marketers, to free expression and that offence caused to a small minority should not affect the ability of the wider public to see their ad. They believed that, as a form of art and self-expression, advertising should be challenging and often iconoclastic.