Brand vs Anti-brand

What is brand/anti-brand?

Branding is something that is engraved into us, often subconsciously, through different senses and means. Larger corporate businesses use branding as a way to give a sense of security with its buyer encouraging the transition from older product to new. The brand of tea, Tetley, a product which would be new to me, may not be the same type of tea leaf that appeared in my parents cupboard however thanks to exposure to this brand's marketing during my upbringing I feel more confident in trying the newer product.

With the rise of big business and the assertion of dominance by multinational corporations the uprise of anti-brand began. Larger companies found it easy to exploit the public in using unfair and aggressive business practices for unneeded gain, thus it became more popular to not appear so multinational in order to please more locally and appear more ethical. Companies can enjoy better customer loyalty and more positive media coverage if they do not appear to be a port of the practical financial oligarchy that is the 'Global 500'.

 Anti-brand logo

McDonalds has always been the first to an idea, whether it be the kids meal, the first 'healthy' option. They are also not very well liked, and with good reason; Marketed at children as a 'happy meal', McDonalds meals are neither a healthy option nor entirely ethical.

Historically Mcdonalds have always had the mass production ethic in mind. Each branch has a uniform order of function and aesthetic. The use of genetically mutated potatoes and processed frozen beef creates consistent flavour and a uniform taste for the brand throughout all parts of the world. Homogenising products and appearances gives a sense of familiarity to the chain.

Ironically as McDonalds grew as a business they decided to give back to the community in forms of children's hospitals, despite the fact that their brand contributes to heart disease, obesity and asthma among other things in customers. 

There was some controversy surrounding McDonalds using false beef trimmings and ammonia in their meat, this looked like pink goop and was added to the meat used in their burger patty production. This caused great backlash for the business and I decided to create an anti-brand logo based on this.

1984 - Making of images

The trailer for 1984 I created used strong imagery derivative of communist propaganda. The images were focused on being straight to the point or visually striking; to do this I used a strong, limited colour pallet in conjuction with some of the most prominent imagery featured in the book.

The imagery of the Big Brother poster is something I wished to repeat a lot in my short animation as it creates a sense of it recurrence, never leaving the thought of the viewer. This is the idea of repetitious bombardment of information to create a suggestion or idea that is common in propropaganda or fear mongering media. I made alternative versions of this slide to give it variety while still having the same 'message'.

When deciding upon the music for this trailer I thought it best to find something cinematic or classical. This book is a classic piece of literature with dark perversions of communism and totalitarianism so the music had to be fitting in tone.

Your name?

Another masterpiece by Makoto Shinkai has made it to the west. This time his work has gone above and beyond his previous works. In previous works he showed his skills in animating rain and in this one he went above and beyond in showing what else he can do.

The story is a sci-fi romance of a school girl from a small town in the country who wishes to become a handsome tokyo boy in her next life. The story progresses to show a Tokyo high school boy, Taki, wake up to be in her body and vica versa and the journey they go on to try and meet in person when they can't even remember each others names.  The story is emphasised by the beautiful soundtrack and astonishing animation.

Two specific aspects of the movie greatly inspired me, the amazing use of animated timelapses and when the art style within the movie shifts its art style for creative and emotional effect. I consider these to be the most interesting and impressive way to get across a message through animation techniques.


Time lapse shown in the trailer of the movie:
Your Name 君の名は

Mass Editing and Silly Cutouts

In this session we were shown a variety of simple Adobe Photoshop tools and skills that can help us to use non-destructive photo editing. This is a very important aspect to digital process and can be done in a minor and major scale.


 JPEG vs RAW
Raw data has more access to shadows and exposure that otherwise would be lost through a compressed format images such as a JPEG or PNG. This allows you to have more control of the overall image quality and can amend any incorrect lighting issues you may have had at the time of shooting. This is a common way for professional photographers to work as amending mistakes is easier and the RAW format can be mass edited in software such as Adobe Bridge.

MASS EDITING
Adobe Bridge is a program majorly used for mass photo editing. All images edited will keep the original format and create a new bridge format file. This allows you to access your original images as well as the ones you have edited. Once you have made the changes necessary to your initial image you can then copy your settings to all images in the photoset you are doing. This technique is good for things like time lapses or a collective image set.

PHOTOSHOP SAFELY
When editing an image in Adobe Photoshop, assuming it isn't in the RAW format and is a flat file image such as a JPEG, you must ensure not to do any image editing to the original 'background' piece. Once this has been edited and the image is saved this will create an irreversible step. A better alternative is to create any additional layers and duplicate the original background layer. This leaves the original image intact.

there are a variety of tools such as the magic wand tool, layer mask and so on which can safely edit an image with once these steps are taken.


GREEN SCREEN MAGIC
 So I used the skills we were taught in this lesson to create a photo edited image of myself in front of a green screen. I had to remove the background using the magic wand tool or other methods with similar effects before I could go ahead and put my cut out into a different environment. This was my result:

Type - Stencil Challenge

Typography was never considered the main focus of documents or advertising until the Bauhaus modern art movement when Typographist Jan Tschichold decided to create a new font removed of any previous superfluous serif or detail.

Upon being inspired by the Bauhaus works Jan decided to create his own font with ideals on what a good font should be, in 1928 he created The New Typography. This font soon became popular not only with people within the movement but more widely with books, magazines and advertising.

As the type movement grew alongside modern art Herbert Bayer created the font Universal in 1925. This font was created with mass production in mind being cheap to print while being legible. This was the first modern font to feature only lowercase letters. The singular set of alphabet kept prices of printing down while functioning on multiple levels as a font. 

"Why should we write and print in two separate alphabets? We do not speak a capital A and a small a."

Type started to be used in posters and typo-photos to give new meaning using type as a creative outlet. Walter Dexel created posters using type in a style which created imagery purely through type and design, using the shapes or styles of letters to provoke images of objects or a visual aspect never before seen from fonts. 

A few years later this idea was explored by Max Burchartz creating a poster using shape and type to give the impression of classical music through the shape, lines and movement of the image overall. There are no photographs or clear cut representations of music so any influence is given through an abstract idea rather than visual factors such as photos or illustration.

Many years later this new artistic form of type made appearance in film. Historically films often shows type in a very basic 

header footer fashion, once the title rolled and when the film read 'Fin'. It was only used in later years as a method to set a tone of a movie. The most well known example would be the North by Northwest opening title by Saul Bass.

North by Northwest opening 

We have come a long way with fonts and the use of type is becoming more creatively free. With more people creating personal typefaces than ever before. There's no standards or structures  so people are free to explore their ideas for fonts and ideas more so now than ever. It is becoming more and more popular with indie culture and the uprise in small businesses and fanzines.

Type - How hard can it be?

For an activity  we were given 10 simplified shapes of which Josef Albers used to create a full type alphabet. This activity made me question how easy it is for us to create letters from basic shapes as our mind feels the need to make connections with shape and type. I would also say that the process was more difficult to create some more 'complex' letters with such a limited set of shapes to work with. The most important discovery was working out the process for the four intimately linked letters " d, b, q and p " all being variations of each other to some degree. This was the best starting point for the alphabet as a result. 

 These are some other ideas I came up with:

   

When compared to the original below the concept was similar however I produced results distinct from this example.

When looking at this type I question its form. The type is supposed to be a new clean graphic however as individual letters the type fails to be as clear as it should be to fit the Bauhaus form follows function formula. "prettiness without readability serves neither author or reader." I feel that this type works more as a collective piece of graphic design due to this unclear individuality to specific letters making it a misconceived response to the Bauhaus form in image only, forgoing the core principals of the style. From a practical standpoint however this type would be quick and easy to manufacture.

Manifesto brainstorm exercise

Feeling a little uninspired by the manifesto task we were set out on a small brainstorming exercise to create a lot of relevent ideas very quickly. In small teams of 4 we were given a variety of cards with keywords relating to things we can use in our personal manifesto. With a short ammount of time, as a group, we had to create as many individual sentences or phrases out of these words. At the end we gathered our most favored phrases to be entered into a larger selection from other groups. the ideas we chose were:

• disrupt the normal
• ideas can come from anywhere
• eliminate negativity
• question logic
• challenge yourself
• choose concepts others wont
• practice daily

Out of all the results the three I found to be the most inspiring were:

•  Do not conceal your purpose
•  Process is important
•  Apply emotion

One hour wonder

 
1 hour animation from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

In order to familiarise myself with some effects skills I made a short 10 second animation of which I had one hour to work on. I focused on learning some basic movement skills such as fade-ins, and panning. Though this is a short and simple video I feel it is important to learn the basics as groundwork for later more complex things.