This is the question:

HOW CAN BRANDING AND BRAND COMMUNICATION DESIGN BE USED TO PROMOTE A MORE SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE / ETHICAL / NON-CONSUMERIST LIFESTYLE IN TODAY'S SOCIETY?

Excellent!

Thanks to Stuart for his patience and contribution in formulating this question. Like he says: 'Now we're in business!'

'Method and Methodology' exercise

Just as a peer to peer share of information, I would like to state here the fact that in the context of Design, my subject's first 'node' of relation to the academic code, as I see it now but couldn't see before, is what the tutors refer to as "broader context". We are asked to 'focus' and 'narrow' our 'broad' view into a 'broader' context.

How good is that?

How can we zoom in to a broader view?

By reflection: we focus on the mirror we place in our view of our subject at the very beginning (with the project proposal) and see through it what is the broader view wherein we are actually standing ourselves.

Any better?

Now reflect on reflection.

We take great care to review context so we don't fall into quite pointlessly reinventing the Wheel, but, hey! we can reinvent the Atom Bomb and Space Travel and the Internet! Unless the contextual review is not very broad at all since we can't even evade the 'mind-trap' of tautology.

Learning Agreement Build-Up

The bottom map from the picture above is the closest I could come to defining what I am looking at as a subject at this point of developing an academic argument. I realize that I went through a process of communicating my area of interest, from describing a singular entity of a vastly chaotic idea, to illustrating it in a collection of more comprehensible 'signs' that can relate to a decipherable 'code'. The key word I found in this fourth stage of ZOOMing in is 'Antithesis'.
This was the 'node' that allowed Stuart Hodges, my supervisor in the MA, to relate to and comprehend what I was talking about, as set in the context of this 'map', and therefore help me finally FOCUS. I am still a mind-map away from actually achieving it.
It has been a tough race with time and information-handling, through a 'jungle' of different theoretical approaches, but now I can see the path that leads to the finish-line. This is an enormous relief, as the fear of being 'lost' was immense despite the fact that I never allowed myself to lose the confidence that it can be done and I am the only one who can do it, because it is my 'original' concept. The more original a concept is, the hardest it is to communicate before it is somehow materialized - visualized.
I have more or less read more than ten books that inform my subject, within in the last month alone, and countless on-line articles and wikipedia definitions... and still my language is primal and insufficient. The practice part of my project (and therefore the finish-line to the race) is yet invisible but I'm positive that (I know) it exists as it is already illustrated in a not-yet deciphered part of the 'map'. The extreme difficulty is partly due to the multi-disciplinary nature of my subject or to put it in Photoshop language, it is like a multi-layered document of which only one layer is seen at the time when I try to communicate it in the tutorial time. It involves as I realized with the second map in the above image, Design, Sociology, Politics, Marketing and Business, Philosophy, Film-studies, Web Architecture and even Physics, Maths and Biology. And that isn't the full list.

Missing a few that I have read and having not yet read in full some of the ones in it, the photo below is like a mind-map on early stages. Not a good example of how to work faster, but a good one of how contextual information is built and appropriate language acquired.

Bottom left is my first mind-map, bottom right my 'reflecting journal' 'sketch'-book.

This post is in celebration of me finding a way out of a maze of non-communication.
I'm still in the maze.

Revision notice

The last document (Backwards Brief) has been revised since it's original posting and slight moderations have been made in light of its relationship with the Learning Agreement. It's still not perfect.

Backwards Brief

The brief is set in 'Research Methods' context for MA studies. We're asked to choose a specific example of completed work related to our research subject area and analyze it after a given formula. As circumstances have it, this analysis has to be rather short.

My subject area is that of 'negative branding' or 'branding the Resistance to Branding'. Or so I have it in my head at the present time.

For the argument's sake I choose Marilyn Manson's latest album art-work. I am sort of familiar with his work although by far not his greatest fan, so I think it's likely to be more insightful. The image for basic reference is taken from this address: http://www.nachtkabarett.com/babalon/topic/934--THEOL-Imagery - (my copy has the old b/w "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" logo where the blue-white "Warning..." one stands here, both logos play one particular role in the packaging). The credits on the inside of the package go: Art Direction and design: Marilyn Manson and Liam Ward, Cover Layout: Jeff Witters.


The album is called "The High End of Low" released on Interscope Records in 2009.

Branding and God

I'm busy trying to sort out my bibliography and reading little wikipedia sort of summaries and Amazon reviews all day is quite a job.

The more I read things relative to my subject the more I feel I'm digging up a sort of 'divinity' issue. Web 2.0 branding is like old religion-building, only at the early stage of us discovering the new world of possibilities and being so absorbed by it that we are actually unaware of falling into the same loop as the first Christians, building a new Christ/Antichrist imagination to replace the old tyranny. I was led to this trail of thought by Umberto Eco's writings (umbertoeco.com). He claims we, humans, are religious animals that need to justify Life and Death in their logic and therefore cannot live without a god, especially in the West after 2000 years of one god moral monopoly.

It seems to me that branding is exactly like building gods, and in 2ooo years from now, there will be more archaelogical findings with the Coke logo on than with the old cross. Further-more, it will look pretty horrific when Coke's Santa will be found next to crucified Christ. Was it like that with the ancient Egyptians and their monstrous 'gods' figures next to and inside Death-glorifying 'tombs'? What a mess of a civilisation!

I am currently interested in looking at the Greek Orthodox Church as a case study of the "perfect brand" with its 'omnipresent' and 'omnipotent' strategies of intangible temptation/salvation and charity/penalty issues, that still survive today by means of oligarchical tangible wealth and un-surpassed imagery (the cross logo et.c.) and fetishes and brand-plans, despite the rise of the New/Social media that have majorly de-contextualized the notions of preconception and superstition, yet rely on the same notions.

Is Mass/Ritual really a needed service or a brand-bubble taking advantage of our credulity?

Is Branding and God one and the same?

(My photos:)