Limitations

The No Brand project was very much compromised with corporate university politics and limited to qualitative research and self reflection that was constantly under censorship scrutiny.

The university in which it took place had taken the common blow of privatization, minimizing investment on academic staff. Consequently, it couldn't offer sufficient supervision, intellectual support and academic debate.

English is not my first language and my native language doesn't even contain a word for branding. Certain concepts fall into the risk of having been expressed inadequately.


Articulation has been the major limitation of the undertaking, as English is very tricky when it comes to distinguishing meanings and contexts in an area where very little vocabulary derives from Greek or Latin.
The subject crossed between many disciplines and a lot more literature review was undertaken for clarification than was expected in an 1 year Master's course, suggesting often leaps of imagination and paradigm shifts.
Branding and Identity Design was one of the paths in a greater Graphic Design group, compulsively oblivious to Business, Marketing, Psychology, Philosophy or any other discipline that an investigation into Branding and Ethics might employ.
The exclusively male, teaching staff was incapable of intellectual critiques and scholarly discussions, while the peering students were not interested at all.
By the end of the year, I had very scarce evidence that the group had any literacy in Graphic Design, whatsoever.
The academic programme was impractically structured, like the building in which it was primarily run. It was described as a taught course but the teaching was more about university regulations than about the studied subjects. The course had 25 students with no allocated studio space and only one full-time staff assigned, who fell ill and was absent all last term - and also happened to be my supervisor.
The time-frame was built upon a fundamentally flawed model that while stating the opposite, it assumed students started with predetermined bibliography and project goals.
The software at our disposal was a bit out of date for professional competition standards and although there was plenty of hardware, it was being shut down too early to allow fruition of serious graphic design experiments. Good old laptop at home did the job. With its tiny laptop screen. At my expense.
Finally, I had 4 years of teaching experience myself - and 17 years in the Graphics field in total - and professional temperament was a limitation in being a student at that particular establishment.