Changing a font

When we go food shopping we enter the environment with certain expectations of the products on the shelves. Every single packaged product has a logo which in turn has its own font and typeface. Although we may not realise it we make a judgement on a given product which partly relies on the font of that product. When a font changes on a product the sales for that product fluctuate, either increasing or decreasing showing that the font clearly has a large causal role in determining sales. When a product changes its logo or font I immediately treat it with scepticism. Why has the company chosen to change the type, colour etc? I realise that this may seem very conservative and I would like to see how other people feel on this matter. So my first intention is to experiment with changing the fonts of well known food brands such as Heinz banked beans and Hovis bread and try to understand why some fonts do not work on certain products and some do, why colours play an important role in our expectation of a product and how our expectation of a product may change when the type or design changes. My second intention is to somehow distribute the new designs of various food brands back into the supermarket with the intention that the customers will look at them and i will try to observe there behaviour. I will distribute them evenly on the shelves so that some will be on show and some will be hidden. Through doing this i am understanding the huge role that type and design have on controlling our consumer desires and how fickle we as consumers can be.

What is Typography?

If we were to consider the normal everyday activities that consume our lives, it would quickly become apparent that typography is ubiquitous and inescapable. for the most part, this material is routine and boring. but it is also, for the most part essential.
Typography has been traditionally associated with design and in particular with the printing industry. However owing to the universal access to digital technology, the word 'typography' is increasingly used to refer to the arrangement of any written material and is certainly no longer restricted to the typographer...-David Jury

Typography and typefaces are key visual elements of developing an appropriate tone. Type selection is first and foremost dictated by the needs and identity of the piece/product being developed.

Although I do not intend to use the coca cola type in my work I think it is important to research this as it is so iconic and recognisable. The first coca cola logo was designed by Frank Mason Robinson in 1885. Thinking that the two C's would look well in advertising, it was John S Pemberton (the drinks inventor) who came up with the name and chose the logos distinctive cursive script. The type face used known as spencerian script was developed in the late 19th century and was the dominant form of formal handwriting in the United States during that period. The red and white coloured scheme in the Coca Cola logo was kept simple and distinctive to lure young minds. I think that by using this typeface for Coca Cola which was the formal way in which people wrote was an extremely clever use of design. The consumers recognised this type, many of them would have written in this way therefore this product would have fitted nicely in their lives. Nowadays the cursive script style of handwriting isn't used by as many people however the Coca Cola type is still relevant, it remains timeless.

The evolution of the Cadbury logo

Change in conceptual direction

I have decided to change the subject matter of my project from the project orientated around lifespace.cc. I feel that i have exhausted my interest in it however the research made from this project will power my new project.
The work of Cildo Merelies has influenced me greatly by applying images and messages onto various items that were already widely circulated and which had value discouraging them to be destroyed such as banknotes and coca cola bottles (which were recycled by way of a deposit scheme).
My initial idea with lifespace.cc was to get my message onto the site and i did this though a blog however i felt that this was not enough and not enough people were seeing the message through my work. So i have chosen to change the theme of my project but keeping my initial intention which is to covertly distribute a message into a consumer product that is out of place with the usual style of advertisement.

Typography

I intent to convey my message through the medium of typography, a technology. The advertisements of products relies heavily on iconic styles and typographies. When we go to the shops we are bombarded with these iconic styles that we hold in our cultural memory. We have certain expectations of a product through its advertisement design. Why is a certain stye of type used on a loaf of bread and another style used on a can of beans? How would our expectations of a product change if the type didn't match the product? How and why wouldn't a style match a product? These are questions that i want to look in to.

Reflective Review

My main concern for Coursework 1 and my aim has been to convey how peoples religious beliefs can be manipulated to make money and how easy it is to take advantage of those peoples cherished beliefs for monetary gain. I am not religious but I am interested in exploring why people may have religious beliefs and how those beliefs can be maintained in a secular society where logical analysis and scientific methods are so dominant. Through joining the christian social network Lifespace the first thing that caught my attention was the amount of products that are for sale and most of the products claim that if bought, would bring you closer to God.This seems to contradict the teachings of Jesus who was said to view the market place and money with great suspicion. The notion of a virtue gift seems bizarre to me, starting off at $5 this is an image you send to a friend for a particular occasion like an image of a birthday cake, and I find it concerning that these virtual gifts are actually bought by members of the site, under the illusion that virtuousness from God can be bestowed through buying it with money.

I found the Postmodernism exhibition at the V and A hugely inspiring and I saw several works that were new to me. In particular the collage and appropriation design stood out to me and I have used these techniques in my own work; these are appropriate mediums for stressing my point. My main aim was to create a piece of work reflecting the wrong doings of lifespace and put it onto the actual lifespace site in a form that was not obviously derogatory and thus would not be removed. It would act as a form of anti-advertisement to those with a keen eye.
I managed to put several different designs on to the website under a blog that I created and I was very pleased to have been able to do this.

I may develop this project further under the same general idea of corruption and fraud using beliefs. The idea of creating a piece of work which appears as one thing but means something different intrigues me as in this context it has the effect of being a process of illustrative subterfuge, whereby the actual meaning of the illustration can be hidden under a layer of false and apparently obvious meaning.

magpies 3

Cildo Meireles's zero dollar bill

'Zero Dollar' is one of Meireles' signature works where he uses a subversive strategy of distribution to communicate his message. By ascribing the value of zero to a reproduction of a U.S dollar bill Meireles strips the symbol of economic dominance of its power. Meireles sold some of the zero dollar bills and in rio tried to give them to a street vendor who was in fact part of an operation to stop him from distributing them, subsequently the police were involved. "But the idea was to produce an object and then try to put this object into circulation which causes the object to provoke a kind of shift in anthropological behaviour" -Meireles.

Magpies 2

I think this image works better in representing lifespace.cc. I like how the important figures of American history on the dollar bills match to the heads of the magpies, it adds a human quality to the animal.

magpies on lifespace

my work on lifespace

http://lifespace.cc/profiles/blog/list?user=001kd4tab5p1x

Magpies

The magpies here are depictions of the people who run lifespace.cc and i have chosen to transform them into magpies to symbolise the theft that takes place on the social network through the scam of the virtue gifts and the constant bombardment of advertisements all of which are demanding money. The head on the left is of a random person i found on google images and the head on the right is Minister Donald A Davis a member of lifespace. I am going to develop this image and put it onto lifespace.cc under the guise of it being a positive meessage for lifespace, however what the image will truly represent is the immoral acts that happen on the social network and the relationship that lifespace has with money.

Here i have added shiny trinkets that magpies are attracted to and also the lifespace slogan.