cmyplay

What is advertising?

Is it the promotion of a viewpoint through the construction and dissemination of a message in exchange for money? Is the end goal of a professional advertiser to aid their clients to make money by selling a product, an idea, an experience to the consumer?

With that in mind I sincerely ask is this man the greatest advertiser?

Is a message created by a culture inseparable from the ruling ideology of that culture? Whether the stance of the message supports or opposes this ideology, does the message not lose meaning when it is removed from it’s context? Considering that Advertisers accept money for crafting messages, does this not make one complicit with their client’s activities?

Isn’t there system set in place to inform the individual when these activities wander into the grey moral area? I believe that this system is called Ethics. Ethics are sets of principles that inform behaviour. Principles that form the foundation for a belief system. When a discipline starts pushing the boundaries of what is possible, naturally ethical principles are called into question:

This may be true for matters of science, but what excuse is there for Advertising? While beliefs are considered to be sacred and above scrutiny, don’t the bedrock principles that inform these beliefs seem to be more malleable and adjustable to circumstances? While people in the media industries grapple with how to create or change public perceptions, why is there not more stringent accounting for why such perceptions are created or changed? The general consensus on diamonds, for instance, is that they are so valuable because they are rare:

In the case of diamonds, the most destruction happens in their mining. Is the long term destruction caused by the design profession not just as destructive and long-lasting? How can products destined for the landfill be force-fed to consumers by slick marketing that aims to transform “wants” into “needs”?

Clearly there are individuals in the industry who realize what is happening. People who disagree with the way that things are being done. If there was no merit to this viewpoint then why is there a popular movement creating images like these?

Is the highest achievement possible in Advertising a successful campaign? And what defines a successful campaign anyway? Is it the effect that a campaign has on increasing demand? Is it a campaign that affects the behavior of consumers that exist outside of the initial target market? Is this not then the best possible result of any campaign?

These questions become all the more difficult to answer when the economy looks like ours does. Or does it make it easier to chase the money regardless of the consequences? Maybe we can sleep easier knowing that we aren’t the only ones doing this. Maybe we’ll get relief from future historians who will believe that we thought that we could fix anything with enough money. Or maybe we’ll get relief from the neatly bottled products that we promote.

Friday. 9 hours that everyone struggles through waiting for the weekend. Instead of wasting productivity, at Etiket, I’ve taken control of organizing a series of discussion sessions. These sessions are intended to allow us to explore topics that are provocative, interesting and informative. Having the chance to present any topic, naturally, I spoke about J.J. Abrams. The references in the poster are quite obvious, but like any good story, the scene needs to be set in the first act. With that in mind, please pay attention as independent filmmaker Kirby Ferguson runs us through the true origins of creativity:

The next speaker is renowned radio producer Ira Glass. Mr Glass dispenses sincere advice on storytelling. On keeping at it until one’s abilities catch up with one’s taste. On learning to cut work and ideas when they are clearly not working:

And now that you’re fully invested in this narrative, your reward as a viewer is a satisfying denouement. J.J. Abrams talks about mystery boxes at TED:

These form part of an internal branding project for Etiket. Each designer needs to produce 3 A3 poster designs that are to be featured in a studio exhibition.

It’s tough to find the time to produce these, especially if they aren’t specifically briefed into the production pipeline. Nonetheless I enjoyed working on these more than some of the other work I’ve done over the past few months.

I repurposed the Hard-drives illustration as both an iPhone background and as a badge design. The badge was submitted to Net#work BBDO as part of the Visi Covet promotion at the Loerie Awards 2010 earlier this month. I’m pretty disappointed that I didn’t see the end product.

This is a proof-of-concept I completed to present the style of illustration that I would like to use for the various children’s sections at a book retailer. I’m very excited by the prospect of working on more illustrations, and while the start to this project was a little rough it promises to be rather rewarding.

This is the final product of the style experiment I went through over the past couple of weeks. Considering the corporate toning down of the image, I think it came out rather well and I’m looking forward to seeing it in print.