BLOG POST N°1: WHAT IS BRANDING? STORY/MESSAGE.

This first session was aimed to show us that everything and everyone are branded, to start we defined the keywords of branding, the elements who came where: representation, identity, images, symbols, principles and coherence.
And as a general concept, we defined branding as an association of a Logo + Advertising.
Later in the session, we put up selfies of our own with what we were wearing that day, the aim of this exercise was to define ourselves regarding the types of brands we were wearing.
 Later on, during the session, we have presented the different types of branding: • Commercial corporates, all the big groups like Apple, Google, Nike, …
• Non-commercial corporates, such as all the ONG, companies that do not sell any products but are represented by a branded image.
• Institutions, Such as UAL: a group of universities grouped under the same name, and appears as a company
• Geographic branding, selling the image of a neighbourhood in development, for example, we where shown Elephant and Castle a place where hight investment is in action in the moment to improve the image of the area.
• Celebrities branding, actors, social media phenomenon, selling their image and influences.

BLOG POST N°2: WESTFIELD-STRATFORD, psycogeological trip

This second week we went to Westfield shopping centre in Stratford (east London). The purpose of the visit was to do a psycogeographic analysis of the retail spaces, by focusing on the hoarding on the front of the building, the indoor décor, the window display, if the staff wear uniform? The overall impression casual or formal? how do the staff behave? And mostly we had to focus on the voice, the message, values, bottom line and emotions.

Entering Westfield, I went through the all building before entering in a shop. The general felling of the place is ok, the layout of the shopping centre is not the best, it is organised like a long corridor, on three floors, if the place was organised in the shape of a circle it could be better.

Starting the visit, I first went to KIEHL’S, a cosmetic brand, it position it’s selves as a premium cosmetic brand the average price for a product is £25. The inside layout is very similar to a pharmacy: very clean, white, organised. The staff was welcoming, the staff where wearing doctors blouses. I’ve asked several questions about the brand and they are really aware of the all history, and they sell the products with a very ‘’complex’’ vocabulary to make you think the creams they are selling are very elaborated.

Louie Smith
Brand Busting
Design for Art Direction
Year 2

BLOG POST N°3: Branding Futures: Minimalism & Social Media.

In this third week of CTS, we focused on the futures of branding and socials medias. The structure of this session was composed of two parts, the first one was based on the vision/lens: anti-capitalist: a critique go the consumerism society referring to several influent personalities such as Marx, Guy Debord and Naomi Klein with her concept of minimalist and no logo brand. The second part of this lecture was specially focusing on socials medias and mind share presented under the format of workshop.  

To start with we focused on the preface Guy Debord talks questions himself about ‘’the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth century’’ (1967), and in the 3rd reprinted edition of The society of spectacle (2008) he assume that nothing has changed since the first version of the preface, that our society hasn’t changed just adapted to new technologies and new communication ways.

BLOG POST N°4: Branding the nations

This week lecture was focused on nation branding, it appears that is one of the most contentious political concept of time.
At first that we have looked at the stereotype that we affiliate to the countries, we take for example the United States the most common stereotype that came to us were: no gun control, violence, celebrities, Cinema industry, artificial.
Stereotypical perception can be harmful for some countries it affected it on every aspect: tourism, trade, investment… for example after the terrorist attack in France on 15 November 2015 the number of tourist in the French capital have dropped, people from other country were not coming because of the risk of attacks.
We can relate that a good branding/ Communication of City/ Country has an impact on everything, as the first case study we did the city Hull in the north of England

BLOG POST N°5: Visit @Packading museum

For this fifth week, we were asked to go and visit the Branding Museum in Ladbroke Grove (W11). This museum is specialised in branding, tracing the history of branding the 1830’s till now, the exhibition is the structure like a chronological tunnel starting in 1837 till today. The aim of this permanent exhibition is to show to the public the evolution through the past 180 years.

Entering this tunnel we start at the victorian period, the beginning of the first industrial era, one of the major period witches still has effects on our today's life. The exhibition is the large collection of grocery products, magazines, cigarettes, iconic objects such as radios, computers, televisions…, toys and all another kind of merchandises.