Due to the mismanagement of time spent on the MARS collaboration project, this week was a massive catch-up week to get back on schedule. It combined tasks from both week 3 which I had not completed and tasks from week 4 which relied on the completion of week 3's outcomes.
Initially, I wanted to take the topic I had focussed on and find an already established label for the medium my focus fits in to well, and therefore looked into the 90s trend known as "culture jamming". Culture Jamming was a tactic used by anti-consumerist socialist activists which consisted of disrupting or subverting media culture by hijacking or parodying mass media in its own medium. The thing that led me to look into culture jamming was the anti-corporate/consumerist magazine Adbusters where avant-garde artists would transform corporate advertisements with subversive messages.
The look into the history of culture jamming and looking at how it has changed over the years into a more multimedia platform as technology has evolved has helped me look at how I can plan my campaign of advertisements and the creation of my master brand by looking at how past examples of culture jamming have reached an audience.
Through this research I also looked at particular artists involved in the culture jamming movement as well as the Adbusters group and found the work of Ron English. Gaining a visual insight into the aesthetics of someone whose work mainly focuses on satirising corporations I compared this to the work on Alan Fletcher, an artist in the 50s known as the Godfather of British graphic design, who revolutionised the aesthetic of corporate advertising. The difference between Ron English's and Alan Fletcher's work helped me to work out how I can produce my own unique form of "subvertisements". Alan Fletcher used a clean, professional yet vibrant and eye-catching aesthetic for the use of corporations to attract an audience whereas Ron English preferred the use of shock illustrations which forced the message very forcefully. Despite this, Ron English's subversion of various cereal box designs gave me the idea to take the official advertisements of unethical corporations and alter them to project my own message rather than adding to them.
Alan Fletcher
Ron English
I then started to work on some initial sketches to try and get ahead of week 4 and to have some visual mock-ups as a final outcome to this week. I focussed on the subversion of the existing logos of various brands that I know use unethical procedures whether in production, distribution or advertising. This was then able to allow me to go into the Mid-Point Review with some substance to really start experimenting bringing a unique style to my aim.
Through my midpoint review, I got some good feedback to work on, including the idea to outline a message for my overall campaign and an aim to each particular piece, from which I got the idea to look into my master brand idea more as an addition to each piece I design and having the aim of each piece to be specific to the brand I am targetting.
I therefore focussed the last few days of week 4 on expanding exploration of scandals associated to specific brands and to take this into experimentation of idea of subversion. It also helped me to narrow down the target for my final outcome to designing 3 pieces: a billboard; a web design; a leaflet to use as "subvertisements" and then a leaflet outlining my master brands campaign, designed to its particular brand specification.
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