What is branding?
Posted by Stephanie on December 12, 2014Since attending the TransD program in the Fall semester of 2014, I’ve been reflecting on how I can repurpose my skills from working in branding and graphic design. So far I’ve learned that though it’s not something I still enjoy doing, being able to communicate my ideas visually has been a very useful asset, especially in group settings. But the more I reflect on the practice of branding, the more uneasy I become. While reading “A Rape in Cyberspace”, the Julian Dibbell describes an event where a user hacks fellow users’ accounts online in real time, and “rapes” them in virtual reality. The virtual assailant enacted sexually violent scenes under the victims’ online accounts without their consent. Following the attacks, the virtual community of LambdaMOO came together to discuss the implications of psychological rape in virtual reality. Questions like, “Where does the body and mind end and begin?” arise, and I can’t help but think about the practice of branding in this light. I wouldn’t call branding, rape, not by any means. But it is an act of psychological hacking. And the ways in which we perceive brands, are often not by choice. It is always presented to us, every minute of everyday from the products that we are surrounded by. Each product is packed with its own narratives–its brand stories, that stick with us.
Branding has evolved tremendously over the last few decades. It’s purpose has transformed from branding your cows to denote ownership, to creating the idea of brand lifestyles for maintaining “brand loyalty”. Today, branding is a powerful tool that can take sugar water like Coca Cola, and somehow push it into a winter wonderland virtual space filled with polar bears, smiles, and happiness. It’s even being made into a movie. Branding has expanded to creating whole narratives out of a single product that take on a life of its own. It’s consumer’s loyalties are deeply rooted in their subconscious, where the colors red and white with a curved line immediately brings up the entire narrative of Coca Cola and its polar bears, smiles, and happiness. A successful brand is powerful; it can move the masses through, for a lack of a better word, psychological manipulation to continue purchasing and stay loyal to everything that is under the company’s “brand alignment”, without your active consent. Especially in a world where we are constantly hit with advertising every minute of our day, we are constantly being hacked, by none other than designers.
This is not a revelation, and designers in the industry are aware of this. We actively use this as a powerful strategy. Many choose to use their powers for “the good guys”. The mentality is if we’re using our powers for good, then it’s alright. But it doesn’t change the fact that the amount of information we are passing is often without knowledge or consent. This can be dangerous. For example, designers have made a big impact on the “green” conversation today. We’ve created an aesthetic narrative around environmental friendliness: as long as we buy the packaging that’s “green” or cardboard, or looks or sounds “natural”, we’re not harming the planet–even if the product isn’t all that it claims to be. But we leave the consumers thinking that they’ve done enough. When really, not buying the packaged product in the first place is perhaps, the ultimate goal.
This train of thought is troubling, because branding also creates beauty, logic, and legibility. Without them we lack clarity. Clear visual communication is a wonderful, powerful thing. But how can we use our skills as visual designers not to hack or manipulate, regardless of designing for the “good guys” or “bad guys”? In light of Bruno Latour who argues that thinking in the terms of good design versus bad design is unproductive, how might we instead reframe the question? How can we reshape our practice to reveal truth instead of virtual stories? Or is a branding practice impossible to achieve such goals, due to its nature of always being tied to a product that needs to be translated to a mass market for the purpose of commerce? I invite fellow visual designers, myself included, to consider this thought and reflect on their design practice. When we build narratives around a brand, regardless of the purpose, are we telling the truth? Perhaps instead of building narratives around a product, we might create a brand that is a vessel–one that invites its users to build an authentic narrative around it. What would this practice look like? How might Coca Cola look, if its brand narrative shifted from polar bears, smiles, and happiness, to the truth of its production, consumption, and ingredients–down to every drop of high fructose corn syrup (or sugar, depending on where you are in the world)?