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.
Now, the front is the right half of the image above but the left half is helping with setting the mood as I'd rather not post the full packaging. The fold-out attached to the depicted part above is actually a seven-fold four times as big with a lot of similarly mooded photos that are sort of telling an avant-garde horror-story and a lot of lyrics. You can see more of it at the address mentioned earlier.
The entire package, along with the print on the disk, speaks of film-making in "Hitchcock meets Lynch" tones, very dark and obscene but, due to the very orderly lay-out, the main structures are well identifiable, like in a classy comic-book. The Art Direction is pointing at DUALITY as the thematic core of the Marilyn Manson brand-identity, in an offensively plain language of symbols that renders it almost invisible. We're looking at a singular structure of absolute contrasts obvious by every means: red vs blue, dark vs light, male vs female, beauty vs murder, good vs evil. The Graphic Design is setting a riddle for us to solve and it uses Typography to suggest a key to the solution. The title is displayed in semi-invisible greys squeezing the smaller words 'THE', 'END', 'OF' between the bigger 'HIGH', 'LOW', so we can start deciphering a code and realize that the artist name is displayed similarly (but in the purest extra-visible paper-white) so that with a little help from mother-imagination Marilyn Manson is reduced to 'MAN'. Then we can rearrange the words at free will and read "THE END OF MAN" or similar, in whatever way suits us best at the moment of deciphering. Finally, it can have many possible meanings, but it suits this document to read it as: "The High-End of Low-Man", where high-end refers to quality/fidelity and low-man to petit-bourgeois consumerism.
The background which has informed this work would take another MA and a half to be sorted out really or even a series of PHD's, but very superficially approached it looks like this:
Marylin Manson debut album ("Portrait of an American Family") was released in 1994. The High End of Low is the seventh studio album the artist has made under his name which, by the way, joins beauty with murder. The person behind Manson, Brian Hugh Warner comes from a journalist higher education and before that, Protestant Episcopalian meats Roman Catholic up-bringing in Ohio and Florida. Marilyn Manson (MM) wouldn't have been without Trent Reznor (from Nine Inch Nails, Nothing - Interscope Records) who is also a great case of 'anti-branding' branding. MM is vulgarly messing with anti-culture and media in an artistic-movement manner that he calls "Celebritarian Corporation" and defines with the slogan "We will sell our shadow to those who stand within it." This last bit was taken from Wikipedia in case you were wondering. If it isn't true, it certainly rings very true to the ears of the public who are already or potentially fans. He has played little roles in several films and he has also produced his own one called "Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carol" which I regret to say I have not yet seen. He also alegedly owns an Art-Galery. He has made quite a few gold hits with his music and has reached ears that very fiew artists of his genre have reached (the genre being Alternative-Hard-Rock/Industrial or as I like to call most of this kind of music, Disco-Metal, is a Post-Punk development that falls into the same pot-holes as the original Punk).
If you haven't heard MM's name you probably need to tell your GP, it might be serious.
Which is exactly the core of the MM brand. It sounds uncanny and dangerously familiar while alien or exotic. And so it looks and so it feels. And so it flows with the flux. MM is identifiable in multiple ways. Everyone knows him and if they think they don't, a glimpse of a picture or a minute from a song and they will go "oh, yeah, I know what you mean", because they do. Not because they are familiar with MM and his work necessarily, but because they are vaguely familiar with the goth kind, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. MM is responsible for "Antichrist Superstar", "The Beautiful People", "Disposable Teens" and "The Nobodies". He is representative of a generation mocking itself and enjoying it. (Audience). He is glamourous and vain and self-destructive and ultra-eccentric and, above all, spectacular. He is a perfect construct of despiseful sexual toys. He is the idol for the young rebels who despise all social morals and the dream of every marketer at the same time. He is Resistance to All in one brand-form. And he is the New World Order itself. Incarnate. Magnificent.
Or rather was.
The album before this one was a self-rejecting anti-Marilyn-Manson statement by MM himself. "Eat Me, Drink Me" featured the Pop-Rock flag-song "Heart-shaped Glasses" and it was the album that succeeded the multi-golden "Golden Age of Grotesque" that featured the super-Industrial The Matrix's-anthem "This is the New Shit". The tone with "Eat Me, Drink Me" has gone down mercilessly much. The openning song goes "If I was your Vampire, ... Death waits for no one" as an answer to a second person's claim "I love you so much you must kill me now". MM is suddenly 'human' wishing he was an immortal monster feeding on us. A tender-hearted, trendy, romantic drug-addict has emerged in simple rock tunes from the still erect corpse of the ultimate Resistance machine that he was until then.
MM had committed a brand-suicide. He had killed in cold-blood his Self! What a wonderful oxymoron to play around with as an artist... What a statement to the world of Branding!
And what a commercial disaster!
This story isn't a new one. Similar transformations have happened to many artists in the Pop-music sector, to many of them multiple-times. Alice Cooper is like MM's dad in this context and Madonna his mentor and unrivaled competitor. Trent Reznor is more like the patron, seen from this side of the world.
Nevertheless. The newer album had to come forth and design-wise it had to follow the brand direction. The target audience had to be MM's already established fans for they are aware of the MM brand so only they can feel the transformation, the death and resurrection miracle as it has been laid out in N. Kazantzakis' "The Last Temptation" (film by M. Scorsese) but for the branding's sake to evolve accordingly. So the album had to feel like the new MM, the human one, the one with earthly sinister passions who "wants to kill you like they do in the movies" dancing the ritual of first trying to f**k 'it', then trying eating 'it', and if 'it' hasn't learn his name then he better kill 'it' before 'they' see 'it' in "Arma-godd**n-mothrf**kin-geddon". MM is celebrating his murder. He has murdered the MM brand. He is the brand-maniac on stage in the horror-play of Branding. "...Like they do in the movies". Hence the mysterious darkness of avant-garde horror conveyed colorfully in the dark photography (although in primary colors only - like in theatrical spotlights) with minimum details that are at once symbolic and uncanny.
Typographically and subsequently aesthetically, the issue is dysfunctional functionality. It is so obvious and deliberate it looks almost like it knows it is displayed on the shelves of supermarkets, a couple of rows down from detergents and cereals. And yet it still calls for a certain intelligence to pick it up and study it, nowhere near interpreting it, which sets it aside, like a serious deodorant.
In the lyrics sheet, we find segments of a bigger plan laid out in open view, hardly using any metaphor. One needs to go through the entire album to grasp it, but once they do, it is pointing clearly to a similar if not the same direction that I have described above. Forgive me for re-phrasing some bits to make-out my point, but the rest of this paragraph contains MM's explicit lyrics for personal study purposes. MM has always been producing work that is self-explanatory and so has he here. He is making it personal, as usual, addressing his audience (us) like he would his girlfriend in their tired relationship. By means of introduction the first track is informing us of his intentions to love us if we let him, if we don't make him stop, because he can't sleep until he devours us. He wants to sell us hate, the same hate he feels when he sees us as a $wastika, so he poses to kill us by killing himself, although he is himself an "Unkillable Monster" - which is so because we're all "from America" since "we speak American". Knowing that, he states that "Whatever doesn't kill you, is gonna leave a scar" early on and just before the last track he pushes himself down and "into the fire" because it's better than risking being dragged down by slipping on his own weight". In a lonely and miserable finale, the last track states he won't hesitate 'to kill to protect what he believes in. Not letting us win, won't satisfy him'. "I'll teach you about loss" is the very last line. And then the album ends, and we have to wait in agony for the next album to tell us what happened and review what we have learnt about loss...
Sound-wise, the tone has gone back up slightly hinting towards a return to the first 5 albums, the singing is again manic and whimsical but the whole structure sounds like the band don't want to experiment anymore and not even copy themselves. It is more like the latest trend in pop-rock, like Muse or something which is a statement in itself, but fails to hit the pop-charts to make a sound.
So it looks like a dead-end which means that MM is to undergo more transformation as an 'undead' brand, a 'vampire' like he wished in the previous album. Only this time, MM has established a serial audience, one that will not suffice for gold hits anymore, but enough to keep the blood and drugs flowing. I don't think the case is this simple of course, it's speculation by mere observation and without appropriate study. MM is free of his brand-Self but the creation/production is still active and that makes him more dangerous as an artist because he is going to be interpreted as such and not just as a brand. Or maybe not.
In the case I had designed the packaging, like the brief goes, I would have to have some basic information like the above or hinting towards it, what the issue is and how much time and money I would get, before starting. I would have started by listening to the album (probably in an early rough mix) and studying the lyrics. (research Stage 1). I would have then similarly listened to all the discography in chronological order, studying the lyrics and artworks and also related publishings, reviews and interviews to familiarize with the brand. Then I would have looked for and listened to what the average audience appears to like, along with watching the major films that feature MM music or character.
Then I would go back to the album and listen to it again making scribblings and drawings.
Then I would informally ask for other people's opinions and take notes. (research Stage 2). I would have to interview MM himself and hear him describe his concept of the album. The High End of Low sounds like an Epic of which I would draw out an abstract (at least) of my reflection of it, and pinpoint the details that I would need illustrated for the work to be MM as well as his 'favorite' tracks/lyrics. Then I would have to know which track is the flag-track/first single and I would draw a little narrative map for it that might be used for scripting the video-clip later but mainly to start shaping more focused forms. Then I would put the album back on and project myself to the desired Self of MM in my head and meditatively experience it (just before going to sleep, preferably).
The next morning the CD package would have been conceived in my head and I would have to make it happen so that we all see what it looks like in visual form. (Design Stage 1). This is where I would formally write a new brief and would make drawings of the concept, for packaging and graphic layout. I would use all the previous research to come up with a scenario, a bigger-idea that ties the past with the feature, the representation of the present. I would discuss this with MM and maybe some marketing representative from Interscope and I would make the necessary modifications. A photographer with the appropriate portfolio would be assigned, studio, set and lights arranged, costumes, make-up, hair, items and MM himself. The photos would have to imply a narrative so a film-director might be at hand, especially if a video-clip was imminent, too, in which case a bunch of technicians and engineers would have to be arranged. And lest we forget the odd story-board artist that I might as well be but I'd rather not. Similarly the lay-out designer would be assigned based on his/her typography skills and understanding of compact packaging graphics for supermarkets, and I might as well be him too - but I'd rather not too.
Finally, technical production (Design Stage 2) and suggestions and evaluations and supervision of the production and a little accounting and paper-work and then sex, drugs and Rock'n'Roll... would conclude the work and we would live happily ever after.
How might these processes relate to your own research? the brief asks, meaning our MA personal subject research. I believe it's sort of standard processes taking different format. I am still to form the Learning Agreement so I cannot elaborate on this yet. But it looks like the methodology outlined here will be repeated almost as in this backwards brief post. Just as above, background information (ie. literature research) is forming an answer to the question "What is the question?" that looks like the beginning of Design Stage 1. So it seems I'm on the right path, which is very reassuring, although it is quite disturbing to see how un-informing my original proposal was compared to this...
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