Identities Are A Major Section Of The Contemporary Graphic Industry

Topic 2: Identity is a central concern of contemporary life. Critically examine and discuss how design or art has been used to explore, discuss and express identity.

Paul Rand is known as one of the most influential and finest American graphic designer of the twentieth century. He is known for his art work predominantly for design, graphic design and typography. Paul Rand was born in August 15, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York with the name Peretz Rosenbaum. Rand was known as “self- taught designer”, he learned about works of Cassandre and Moholy-Nagy from European magazines. His esteemed contribution to the design form is acknowledged by many critics and is amazingly extraordinary. However, corporate identity design was the area during his peak design career that gave him global recognition. He is looked upon as one of the genius who essentially established standards for the conception of logos for the

Style industry is for the most part a configuration-overwhelmed industry yet the most fruitful brands are additionally socially mindful and fit for actualizing advertising methodologies which speak to the brand as well as cross the patterns and investment of the intended interest group.

In addition to creating open forms of communication and direct access to consumers’ opinions and reactions, advancing social and visual technology delivers access to technologically advanced, eye-catching, and interesting design and media tactics formerly available only to the tech savvy generation. The internet has transformed the globe and it’s lasting presence is inevitable, proving that to discount social media’s new but important role will ultimately lead to failure in the long term.

Since an increasing number of people focus on brand names instead of product, brands become important elements for customers to choose products (Carroll, 2008). When customers trust the brand, the benefits for the manufactures are generated. In the first place, brands can be used by products as the tool to identify and differentiate themselves from various products. Secondly, brands are helpful for companies to build a competitive advantage (Bick, 2009). Therefore, organisations take more attention to branding.

Despite the fact that we’re already in the 21st century, society continues to show signs of progress and development strongly leaning towards the direction of advancement, constantly evolving. This pattern is no different from the world of advertising, as it has also evolved through the years and quite recently an unexpected technological innovation took the world by storm. It made such a tremendous impact that eventually led to the transformation of traditional marketing, and it’s no other than social media that we all learned to love.

Traditional heraldry and contemporary corporate visual identity (CVI) are the two systems that communicate the idea of identification. Identification is not only for modern world, as far back as during medieval ages, identification already started in the form of heraldry. Traditional heraldry uses different design approach but mainly is to communicate identity. Even though both identity systems exist in two different eras, they share the similar purpose, which is mainly to identify. Moreover, designs and symbolism also play an important role on identification. For example, the McDonald’s Golden Arches logo (Figure 1), which resembles an “M” for “McDonald’s”, is a famous logo that can be easily recognized.

Visual culture is the use of images, media, and other visual modes to represent the events and ideas of the world (Mirzoeff, 1999). The visual modes can range from an oil painting, to media on the internet, advertisements or TV. Visual culture has an influence on the consumer who is exposed to it. In this essay, I am looking specifically at how visual culture is used in advertisements, and how large brands, such as Coca Cola and McDonalds, use visual culture throughout their advertisements. Visual culture is often used to benefit a business. Such as increasing brand recognition through the marketing of the brand via colour or imagery. It can also be through catchy slogans or jingles that are created to leave an impression and therefore influence the consumer to the extent that they are remembered for a significant period of time. Therefore, it can be seen that Coca Cola and McDonalds both use different forms of visual culture in order to improve company image and increase brand recognition.

In society today, everything has a name for it. If the product doesn’t have a well-known name, it goes by name that a well-known product that is similar goes by. Branding has made its impact on society and it’s never going to go away. In this situation, all we can do from here is analyze more and more until we fully understand its presence in society and its effects. Branding has its biggest effects on consumerism, which makes us question consumerisms power in society. Has our society become one big, replicated consumer or can a consumer or even a person still be unique and individual? Branding creates competition amongst companies throughout the world and creates a competition for the consumers. Not only, it also creates issues, creates

The visual identity of a brand is what Jean-Jacques Urvoy and Sophie Sanchez describe as the “genetic code of the company‟‟ (2008 p 11) According to them it “ draw the speech of the company, what it wants to say and the meaning it wants to give to its actions” (2008,p13) Here the visual identity is seen as an important framework that holds the brand visually and fundamentally as one. Jean-Marie Floch gives a more technical definition of the visual identity: “combining writing, photography, and graphics giving meaning and value to a brand-name” (2000,p9) This last definition by Floch presents the elements which constitute a visual identity. Here the visual framework relies on words, image and graphics. The visual identity encompasses all the graphic elements which refer to a brand when you see it. Floch talks about words, images and graphics : 3

The relation brand-consumer changed aspect. The brands have to watch henceforth what people say of them on these social media and to begin the dialogue with their consumers to make sure to keep a good "e-reputation" and to enter a relational optics with their customers. But they can also benefit from these digital social networks to try to create consumers' community on-line "ambassadors" around them, to federate them and to develop loyalty of them thanks to a communication and specific tools.

In today’s world an individual is bombarded with brands from companies all around the world. These companies start with an idea and most of those ideas develop into a brand. Brands rely on the use of semiotics, “the science of signs” (Ryan and Conover 25), to relate to consumers or interpreters. They also relay on the connotation and denotation of the signs as well as the colors being used. When it comes to the entire package of a marketing plan and branding a company or product, graphic designers need to look at how to create the brand from a visually and culturally pleasing aspect. A brand is mostly based on a semiotic design that uses a trademark image and colors that relate to a group in a cultural setting.

Half a dozen branding agencies, most of them based in London and the USA, are fighting not just on behalf of toothpaste or cars but, with dogged determination, in the aviation industry over budgets worth millions. "The airlines are much more conscious today that branding can be a question of survival," says David Davis of the Future Brand agency. It is not just a matter of appearing attractive to one’s own staff and one’s customers. With

"The name is composed of the title by which the company, product, or service is commonly known and the graphic forms of identification, including symbols, logotypes or signatures, tag lines, and representative characters" (Roman G. Hiebing Jr and Scott W. Cooper; The successful marketing plan, a disciplined and comprehensive approach; 2003).

In recent times, branding has played a pivotal role in some brands’ success. This has been made possible through the ability of some marketers to capture the essence and minds of people (consumers), and put the trends and characteristics into the personality of a brand. Customers have always found ways to identify themselves with certain products, and on several occasions, branding campaigns