Critical Positions on Advertising Seminar Notes

Semiotics Task

Semiotics is the science of studying signs and their meanings.

A Code is made up of symbols and signs, and are found in everything around us: all forms of cultural practice, and in order for them to make sense we need to learn and understand them. They rely on a shared knowledge. If you have a code that is personal to you and a group of your friends, someone from a different part of the country or the world probably wouldn't have a clue what your on about.

Codes are made up of Signifier and Signified.

• Signifier - sound image (words that gives meaning - sound/photo)
• Signified - mental concept (what something actually is/what we think about it)

Type is a signifier; it is a vechile for language and can communicate in itself as much as it writes. If it doesn't signify what is written the codes clash.

Denotation - the basic understanding. Usually typical understandings, direct.

Connotation - associational meanings. Inside feelings, dependant on the receiver. Relies on personal social experience.

Myth - comes into play eithin the realm on connotation.

"The Myths which suffuse our lives are insidious precisely because they appear so natural." - Barthes, R.

Task

In a group, we were to select an article from a newspaper and find all of the things we have discussed in the seminar using the right terminology.

<image of newspaper article - still to come>

• Irish luck has ran out - myth - leprechaun has pot of gold but there's no gold because they need bail out.
• Image connotes draws one conclusion - unrested and whole country out of control - connotes negativity.
• Green connotes/signifies Ireland - leprechauns/fields/myth.
• 'Go To Bail' - connotes everyday blokishness/slang - what is used in every day conversation with the average man to link with - working class slang.
• Cultural myth that belittles country.
• Mocking with the tiger image.

Semiotics Seminar Notes

Lecture 4 - Advertising and New Media

Here are the notes I made on the Advertising and New Media lecture on 24/11/2010.

Objectives are:
   - key points in history of advertising
   - understand context in which advertising emerged
   - understand some aspects of advertising strategy
   - speculate the implications of New Media on creative and the role of the creative.


What is New Media?
Sutherland, 2009 quote.
"...media that work not through persuasion or impressions but through engagement and involvement. If we stick with the old [Mass Media] model, we squander all the possibilities of the new media ecosystem"


    - president of the IPA
    - executive creative director of Ogilvy UK


What is old media?
    - began late 19th Century.

Radio

Robin Wight
   - founder of WCRS
   - future's bright, future's orange
   - 118 118

William Hesketh Lever
   - Lever Bros

Bill Bernbach
   - first to combine copywriters and art directors

In the beginning.. There was soap.
   - sunlight exhibition, Liverpool

Lever Bros, soap
   - today, Unilever, 900 brands
        - Ben and jerks
        - bertoli
        - birds eye
        - persil
        - sunsilk

W.H. Lever 1851
   - same year as Great Exhibition oh 1851

By 1860's
   - changed
        - worked out how to print on packaging
        - mechanically fold and build boxes
        - this brought kelloggs, cols

Lever was the first to package the first bar of soap
   - added value
   - new class

Mid to late 19th century.
   - boom in printed ads
   - press indispensable for ads
   - newspapers
   - posters
        - colour
        - printing press
        - 1890's onwards
        - this technology allowed art to be reproduced

Lever bought art with intentions of using in his advertising
   - he bought 'the new frock' by William Powell Frith
   - 'the wedding morning' by John Henry Frederich (1892)
   - changed some objects in the piece
   - clock and cup - changed to soap

Brand loyalty.

19th century
   - colourful, innovative advertising was crucial to Lever's success

Medicine, chocolate and soap were big on advertisements at this time.
   - soap was the first to become international campaign
        - didn't want it, needed it.

Promotion boom - interactive?
   - influential schemes
   - royal endorsement from 1892 Queen Vic
   - 1903 they began wrapper scheme offering soap in return.

Capture the children.

Investing in advertising
   - Lever spent £2million first 2 decades of making soap
   - purchased Philadelphia soap firm

Art Direction
Gross suggested plantol should depict tropical climates and express the care that is exercised in refining oils
   - a vision to disguise the forced slavery?

Lever - executive creative director
   - always researching new things
   - where to advertise?
   - send ad examples across the country
   - amassed and was among innovators of advertising expertise
   - advocated truth in advertising is an asset; falsehood in advertising is a liability

Lever - salvation
   - many of his early ads emphasised that sunlight soap would save women from drudgery.

Sunlight soap and how to use it, spoke to working class housewives
   - improves lives
   - easier
   - save sex life
   - save marriage
   - quality time for romance
   - quick

The employed international agencies
   - particularly for American market
   - britishness suited all

The British imperial mission
   - to civilise
   - no commodity aided more than soap

The Lynx Effect. Quote,
"The message was clear, if one wished to gain or retain a partner, a job, a reputation and self esteem, one needed to attend to personal hygiene...sales skyrocketed"

New media model
   - shift in last decade from mass media to my media
        - more personalised

Viral advertising
   - one distinction between new and old media
        - voluntary viewings (video viewings online)
        - forced viewings (tv or print)

Definition of viral.
"unpaid peer-to-peer communication of content originating from an identified sponsor using the Internet to persuade or influence an audience to pass along the content to others"

New communicational model
   - engaging with an audience
        - via comp

Trevor Beattie: ideas
   - forget next big idea and come up with lots of small ideas
   - Internet is last big idea
        - allows lots of small ideas to circulate
   - digital media > convergence of media opens ip opportunities for realcreatives

Viewer generated content
Coke and Mentos
   - these were worth £10million to Mentos




Old Spice

5 Examples of Modernist Graphic Design

Here is my 5 examples of Modernist Graphic Design.

Modernism, in all was a revolt against the conservative values of realism, and encompasses the activities and output of those that considered the fact that ‘traditional art’ was becoming outdated, meaning it was a reductive movement. The term is used to describe the cultural expressions of modernity in relation with the experience, and at the time people believed that design and art could change the way people think. It began just after WWI due to people’s optimism and believed that Modernism would lead towards a progressive society with the notion that the idea of change is better: meaning the goal of it was to create a better life. The main function to this was the belief that the form of an object should be dictated by its function – “form follows function”, shifting away from unnecessary decorations disguising the actual materials in which something was made from. The design initiatives had to allow for the mass production of goods, meaning the more simple forms were preferred.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti / 1914 / Parole In Liberta  / URL

Adolphe Muron Cassandre / 1935 / Normandie / URL

This example by Cassandre is a great example of the modernist way of 'form follows function', with the whole thing being kept very simple and communicated its message clearly.

Jan Tschichold / 1927 / Die Frau ohne Namen / URL

The composition of this poster is stripped back to the simple lines and shape, with an informed layout within them of the type and images. There is little actual information used so it is straight to the point. The poster as a whole looks quite abstract.

Lyubov Popova / 1922 / Val's Pamiati Skriabina / URL

Joost Schmidt / 1923 / Bauhaus Exhibition / URL

Lecture 3 - The Document

Here are my notes from The Document lecture we had on 17/11/2010.

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated."

Aims:

   - introduce documentary photography and conflict photography

   - introduce the work of Mass Observation, Magnum and the FSA Photographers

   - explore questions of objectivity and subjectivity inherent in documentary practice

   - interrogate the authority of the photographic image

Documentary photography has dominated the 20th Century.

Joseph Nicephore Niepce - View from a window at La Gras (1826)

Genre is difficult to define.

   - wide variety of styles and topics.

Idea/term document signifies evidence of something not to be questioned.

Use of camera not only to record but to document and radicalise situations

   - camera with a conscience.

   - not just there to record but also there to expose situations

   - contact between audience and photography

The role is not to be just an invisible eye,

   - involve themselves

   - taking a stance

   - aligning themselves.

Old photography became popular of showing the other how others live.

William Edward Kilburn - The Great Chartist meeting at the common (1848)

   - photographer not involved

        - higher

        - not seen

        - removed

   - authenticity, historical fact?

How can a photographer not influence events in any way?

   - factual records of events

   - only records of history

People want to capture the world and war becomes key focus.

The Decisive Movement

Henri Cartier-Bresson,

   - depiction of everyday

   - also composed

   - have photos in head before took it

"photography achieves its highest distinction - reflecting the universality of the human condition in a never-to-be-retrieved fraction of a second"

   - more artistic

   - composed

How much of documentary photography concerns itself with aesthetics?

Jacob Riis

   - middle class social campaigner

        - squoller and poverty

   - book - how the other half live

Sensationalising recording.

   - morbid fascination for others

        - allowing the rich to spy on the poor.

Jacob Riis - Bandits Roost (1888)

   - not invisible eye

   - not neutral

   - posing for it

   - not depiction of real life but how they want it to appear

   - Riis fantasy?

Jacob Riis - A growler gang in session (robbing a lush) (1887)

   - posing

   - all in same clothes

   - acting

   - artificial representation

Lewis Hine - Russian Steel Workers (1908)

   - subtle

   - more empathy

   - more humanity

   - more neutrality - awkward

   - not stereotyped people

F.S.A Photographers (1935-44)

   - 2 ways of appoaching communication

   - director Roy Stryker

   - Depression- 11million unemployed

   - mass migration of farm labourers 'oakies'

   - the photograph as both emotive photojournalism and emotive lobbying tool

F.S.A = Farm Security Administration

   - photographers given shooting scripts

        - what to take

        - how to take it

   - has a total agenda

Margaret Bourke-White - Sharecroppers Home (1937)

   - documents with agenda

        - not neutral

Russell Lee - Interior of a black farmers house (1939)

   - same as the previous example but a different way of representing

Dorothea Lange - Migrant Mother (1936)

   - became poster for the great depression

   - try draw parallels 

   - arranging the people like actors until they get what they like

Robert Frank

   - exposing America

John Lamprey - Front and profile views of a malayan male (1868)

   - comparing other to self

   - used to prove judging people to characteristics

        - justify scientifically black inferior to the white

Photography is power.

Mass Observation 1937-60

   - science project

   - Tom Harrison

   - Charles Madge

   - Humphrey Jennings

   - Humphrey Spender

Neutral democratic response to the woking class.

   - more accurate document of the world.

War/Conflict Photography.

Robert Capa - Normandy, France (1945)

   - becomes it's own

   - provide horrifying examples of living

   - he was there when everything was happening so unfair to ask if they are 'real' - but they have

Magnum Group

   - international group of documentary photography

   - founded 1947 by Capa and Cartier-Bresson

   - ethos of documenting the world and its social problems

Robert Haeberle - People about to be shot (1969)

   - intercepted the moment where people about to be shot

   - last moment of peoples lives

   - inhumanity

   - should he have intervened and tried to stop it happening?

Documentary Photography

   - desire to show horror of the world to try and make a difference.

Key Features

   - offer humanitarian perspective

   - potray social and political situations

   - porport to be objective to facts of situations

   - people tend to form the subject matter

Lecture 2 - Graphic Design: A Medium for the Masses

Here are the notes that I made from the Graphic Design: A Medium for the Masses lecture on 10/11/2010.

We will be looking at:
   - origins of Graphic Design
   - Graphic Design relations to - fine art
                                           - advertising
   - Graphic Design as a - tool of capitalism
                                 - political tool
   - Graphic Design and postmodernism
   - Graphic Design and social conscience


Visual communication started over 15 000 years ago documenting the world around.

John Everett Millais - Bubbles

   - advertisement?

1922 was the first time the phrase Graphic Design was used by William Addison Dwiggins.

"In the matter of layout forget art at the start and use horse-sense. The printing-designer's whole duty is to make a clear presentation of the message - to get the important statements forward and the minor parts placed so that they will not be overlooked. This calls for an exercise of common sense and a faculty for analysis rather than for art".

There are different ways of calling Graphic Design.

   - Herbert Spencer - 'merchanized art'

   - Max Bill and Josef Muller-Brockman - 'visual communication'

   - Richard Hollis - 'Graphic Design is the business of making or 

                           choosing marks and arranging them on a surface'

Stephen Heller quote 1995.

"Although Graphic Design as we know it originated in the late nineteenth century as a took of advertising, any association today with marketing, advertising, or capitalism deeply undermines the Graphic Designer's self-image. Graphic Design history is an integral part of advertising history, yet in most accounts of Graphic Design's origins advertising is visually denied, or hidden behind more benign words such as 'publicity' and 'promotion'. This omission not only limits the discourse, but also misrepresents the facts. It is time for Graphic Design historians, and designers generally, to remove the elitist prejudices that have perpetuated a biased history."

  - this is making a point that Graphic Designers are breaking away from advertising.

Early Graphic Design

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - Aristide Bruant (1893), poster.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - La Goulue (1890), poster.

Alphonse Mucha - Job (1898), poster for cigarette papers.

   - how much is that actually Graphic Design?

   - how much is this actually fine art?

Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Scottish Musical Review (1896), poster.

Peter Behrens - AEG (1910)

War Posters.

Alfred Leete = Britons [Kitchener] wants you! (1914), poster.

James Montgomery Flagg - I want you for U.S. army, (1917), poster.

Germany

Julius Gipkens - Trophies of the Air War (1917), poster.

Bauhaus

Wassily Kandinsky - Composition VIII (1923)

El Lissitzky - Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919), poster.

   - this was highly influenced from Kandinsky's work he was doing at the time.

London Underground Map

F.H. Stingemore - London Underground Map (1931-2)

   - this is how the London Underground map used to look.

Henry C. (Harry) Beck - London Underground Map (1933)

   - it was updated by Harry Beck, making it more simple. Not necessarily realistic to how it actually looks, but gives a simple enough version for people to see and understand it.

After Harry Beck - London Underground Map

   - a few changes have been made to it to make it work better. It is none representative and not actual. This is the version of the map that is used today.

Simon Patterson - The Great Bear (1992), lithograph on paper.

   - he has taken the London Underground map (which is Graphic Design) and made it into something else (which now makes it fine art).

The Bauhaus changed Graphic Design post world war.

Herbert Bayer - Kandinsky 60th Birthday exhibition (1926), poster.

   - this poster breaks the rules of grids and uses angles.

Swiss Graphic Design

Herbert Matter - Swiss Tourist Board (1932-34), posters.

France Graphic Design

A.M. Cassandre - L'Intransigeant (1925), newspaper poster.

A.M. Cassandre - Etoile du Nord (1927), poster.

Britain Graphic Design 

Tom Purvis - LNER (1937), poster,

British Graphic Design at this time was still very conservative theme 

   - take fine art and put text on

   - not as advanced as the rest of the world.

German Graphic Design

Ludwig Vierthaler - Degenerate Art (1936), exhibition poster.

   - after Hitler shut down the Bauhaus.

   - what Hitler chose as bad art to show off how bad it is.

   - use poster that is 'modern' to again try make the whole thing look bad.

Hans Schleger - Eat Greens for Health (1942), poster.

   - Schleger was a German working in the UK.

<image 1>

Rene Catala i Pic - Let's Squash Fascism (1936)

   - do we need any type on this? (no)

Post Second World War

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Abram Games - catalogue for 'Exhibition of Science', Festival of Britain (1951)

   - still conservative and not pushing boundaries.

   - more British and really influencial.

Paul Rand - advertisement for Jacqueline Cochran (1946)

   - is this Graphic Design or advertising?

   - promote people buying to lift economy.

Ken Garland - First things first manifesto (1964)

"We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this brief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomache powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons...

"There are other things more orth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications, and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world."

   - saying there's more to life than buying and selling products.

F.H.K Henrion - Stop Nuclear Suicide (1960), poster.

Art Workers Coalition - Q. And Babies? A. And Babies. (1970)

   - does it need the text?

   - is it Graphic Design or photography?

Punk

Jamie Reid - Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks (1977), sleeve design.

Post Punk

Peter Saville - FAC 001, The Factory Club Night, poster.

   - misses the point.

   - not traditional Graphic Design.

Peter Saville - New Order, Blue Monday (1983), sleeve design.

   - best selling 12" single ever made.

   - moving into post modernism

        - is the packaging most important?

Britain 1980's

Neville Brody - The Face magazine covers (1980's)

America

<image 3>

David Carson - Ray Gun, double page spread.

   - arrive of grunge movement?

   - art for art sake.

        - is it becoming Graphic Design for Graphic Design sake?

David Carson - Don't Mistake Legibility for Communication

<image 4>

Designers Republic - Pop Will Eat Itself, Ich bin ein auslander (1994). sleeve design.

Julian House - Primal Scream, Xtrmntr (2000), sleeve design.

   - digital revolution of cut and paste.

Does Graphic Design become as much the product that is collectable?

<image 5>

<image 6>

Mark Farrow - Spiritualized, Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space (1997). limited edition DC packaging.

   - is it useful?

<image 7>

The Coup - Party Music (2001), withdrawn CD cover.

   - was designed before the 9/11 attacks.

<image 8>

Time Magazine - Cover (September 14th 2001)

   - the similarity is almost the same. Raised a lot of questions for The Coup.

Naomi Klein - Truth in Advertising (2000), (in Looking Closer 4, page 64)

"Quite understandably, the people behind these campaigns have come to think of themselves as cultural philosophers, spiritual guides, artists, even political leaders. For instance, Benetton, rather than using it's ads to extol the virtues of its clothing, opted instead to communicate what Olivero Toscani believed to be fundamental truths about the injustice of capitol punishment. According to the company's communication policy, 'Benetton believes that it is iportant for companies to take a stance in the real world instead of using their advertising budget to perpetuate the myth that they can make consumers happy through the mere purchase of their product'."

<image 9>

Oliviero Toscani - Benetton adverts (1992)

   - italian company.

   - uniting nations.

<image 10>

Barbara Kruger - I shop therefore I am (1987)

   - Selfridges now use this as their advertising campaign.

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This is Barbara Kruger's work being used in Selfridges.