Money - the price is right

The price is right 

We started off we an activity on what price we would charge for certain projects.
for a logo - £75,  branding and publication - £600, new identity -  £500,  indie magazine - £150

Ways of working out figures - time frame or day rate - can work out outgoings
worked out my outgoings per month are :
Phone : £42
Insurance : £13.50
House : £476
Adobe : £16.24
Travel : £50
Gym : £20
Food : £100
Clothes : £80
Entertainment : £100.  divide by 4 = 225 per week to cover outgoings

yourrate.co

You set your rate - a lot comes down to confidence

if something is done quickly its based upon year of experience and expertise

Citibank - drawn on napkin - logo cost 1.5 million
nike logo cost 35 dollars in 1971

confidence plays a huge part - idea of value
setting up an hourly rate is not ideal for the logos as value - doesn't see end value

Project based fee
assess job and quote based on the agreed work and deadline - sign contract and deliver
advantages : charge upfront - 50% then 50% when complete
How many round of amendments they can have

Value based pricing
Charge based upon business size - you assess the business, what the project stands to add in value and make a quote based upon that.
scale with business - opportunity for us to educate clients - benefit for a major upturn - perhaps if they sell an amount you get a stake.

value to client - price clients not the job - who you give logo to price should change

client can't have it both ways - time & money - most value time
charges per hour punishes for being good - care about the end product

believe that it is what its worth
undercharge - too good to be true - a risk

futur - youtube

right approach - depend on project, preference or client - one size doesn't fit all

good, cheap and fast - can only pick two 
good and cheap = won't be fast 

freelance project - giving plenty of buffer - need the sales bit if freelance
looking back at the projects;

logo : £150 - due to being a student its a smaller client and budget -
as a new business - reasonable - come back to you

re designing an indie magazine : £5,000  around a month or 2 months

identity of a summer festival aimed at students : £10,000 (whats its going on etc)

Branding and publication design for tetley exhibition: £20,000

Getting paid 

Invoice - all the clients details, the work detailed, your payment details, date, 14 day window to pay, a number reference for invoices, invoice to be inline with personal branding, 

apps and software - invoicely, Xero, Anna, quickbooks 

self assessment tax register - utr number gov website

chasing clients: 'the accountant' send an email from an account email account, all text in red

This session has been really beneficial with learning that the methods that I currently use aren't necessarily the most beneficial when pricing work for clients. The biggest learning point was that we can charge a lot more than we think due to the time period, experience and with the outgoings that we have. The thought of charging a high amount is a daunting prospect, however it has made me learn that I should charge more due to the time of the project and should consider costings more. The method that I think I will use is project based fee due to being more comfortable with this method, I just need to evaluate the timescale more to find a more appropriate price and be more confident in my work and experience at being a graphic designer. 

Research - Business Growth: Building an Empire with Your Brand Mascot

source : https://www.business2community.com/branding/business-growth-building-empire-brand-mascot-01213792



In other words… we want to put human characteristics on non-human items, in order to feel a connection to them. Deep Stuff. The study also goes on to state that brand mascots serve as a bridge between “producers” and “consumers”, giving the customers a sense of trust and friendliness toward the corporations. Tony the Tiger, Aunt Jemima, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Betty Crocker give friendly faces to faceless corporations.

As his modest company began to grow, so did Obici’s belief in advertising. While other processors thought national advertising was a waste of money, he believed that name and brand recognition would be critical for his business. He did something drastic, and held a contest with a $5 prize for the best mascot design. Long story short – Mr. Peanut was born in 1917. And because Obici was so marketing savvy, he not only created a brand mascot, but also created coloring books, advertising posters, and appeared in multiple newspapers to further his reach.

And his brand mascot paid off! Thanks to Mr. Peanut, the company grew from $1 million to $7 million in 5 years! And we’re talking back in 1917, where $7 million was a lot of money.

Fast forward to today and Mr. Peanut has become an iconic brand mascot, even boasting over 600,000 followers on his personal Facebook page and tweeting away over on his Twitter account. 

Enter the Social Media Age. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Google Plus. The popularity of social media in the marketing realm has provided a huge channel for brand mascots to come alive.  Social media has made icons and mascots a much more interactive component of a brand’s story. With Facebook boasting over 845 million users worldwide, and Twitter over 500 million users, social media networks present a large population for consumer interaction. This gives brand mascots the ability to “communicate” to consumers through their respective social networking sites.

Carol Phillips,  president of consulting group Brand Amplitude, says this about brand mascots and social media:

“Mascots are “the gift that keeps on giving”. They never get in trouble with the law. They don’t up their fees. You can use them for a long, long time. Today, social media is giving marketers a whole new playground to test and nurture mascots. I think the web is going to [bring] a heyday for creating new characters and stories,”

Research - Medium.com - How a Brand Mascot Can Make Your Business More Personable

How a Brand Mascot Can Make Your Business More Personable

Rick Enrico May 27, 2017

The primary purpose of a mascot is to help build and strengthen brand identity. It’s also a good way to reinforce top-of-mind awareness. When people see your mascot in a constant basis, they become more primed to put your business in their mind map. Come checkout time, your business will be the first thing they’ll think about. In other words, you’ll be their official go-to brand.

We like assigning human characteristics to animals and objects because it helps us make an emotional connection with them. We can understand them better when we have obvious similarities.

Uniqueness and differentiation are two of the most important things that a business should possess in the now-saturated economic industry. Fortunately, this is where a brand mascot can help. A mascot is essentially an extension of your business that explores the more creative and customer-centric side of your brand. By personifying your brand, it creates an emotional bond that bridges the gap between you and your target audience.

The said bond can create a sense of continuity that can make your customers feel more at ease and comfortable with your business. The mascot will assure them that they’re dealing with something familiar and reliable.

Brand mascots that easily connect with customers are more likely to inspire them to engage in conversation. Compared to flat logos and faceless corporate staffers, mascots can actively encourage customers to take part in brand-related activities.

However, there’s an important caveat you have to remember: In order for your mascot to effectively engage the audience, it should have a sense of life in it. It should feel like it’s alive, and not just another robotic and unfeeling entity whose only possible purpose is to bore the audience and cause them to be more detached from the brand. An example of a dynamic brand mascot that engages the audience well is SlideGenius’s very own SlideGuy. He’s hip, he’s suave, and he sure looks like he hangs out with cool people a lot. He’s the perfect face that communicates what kind of an A-okay presentation design company SlideGenius is.

in social media

In a marketing world dominated by digital media, it would be a sin to not give your brand mascot its own and separate social media assets. When used optimally, a mascot can be the perfect tool to make your social media profiles stand out.

Indeed, a study conducted by Synthesio, a global social listening platform, found that mascots generally contributed to a higher percentage of engagement in social media compared to celebrity endorsers. And that’s not all. As you can observe, self-promotion done by a brand mascot seems more natural and more appropriate compared to one done by a person, whether a celebrity or a corporate staffer.

• Planters’ Mr. Peanut. Mr. Peanut has been around since 1916, or at least he says so on his Facebook page. If this is true, then Mr. Peanut has been in existence for over 100 years, and he’s still going strong today. Perhaps his success is due to his unconventional appearance? Or maybe it’s because Robert Downey, Jr. lent him his voice in the past? Or maybe it’s because Bill Hader is now the new voice of this character? Whatever caused it, Mr. Peanut’s success is proof that mascots can sell a business.
• Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger. Who hasn’t seen Tony the Tiger? Who hasn’t heard his catchphrase, “They’re grrrrreat!” This iconic mascot is everywhere — from grocery aisles to Twitter. And he’s always talking about his love for Frosted Flakes and other things.
• M&M’s characters. Did you know that there are six M&M characters? The sarcastic Red, the cool Blue, the simple Yellow, the paranoid Orange, the alluring Green, and of course, the authoritative Ms. Brown. Combined, these characters have over ten million fans on Facebook.

OUGD603 initial brief ideas

client - live brief
competition
internal collab
external collab
research led
independant

1. Client (live brief)  - Toasties (Family business - sandwich shop) illustrate and design the layout for their double sided menu 
2. Collab  - Fry guys (something more project) expanding it 
3. Competition - Oh deer - designing a Papergang box - a stationary box with a theme 
4. Competition - HSBC - D&ad illustration brief - airport activation - illustration to their campaign and identity
5. Independent (self iniated) - A range of greetings that celebrate the everyday achievement 
6. Client (live brief) - A cover mount stamp and 2 A4 pages of Printables for a Mixed media magazine
7. Independent (self iniated) - Children's food menu - Re branding Toby Carvery to be more engaging and accessible
8. Collab - With Emily - A well being box, aimed at helping students to take care of themselves - from students to students and would include seeds, notebook, ways of working, face mask etc (like a subscription box type)
9. Research led  - Packaging for children's food - making the healthy more enticing - how packaging can influence (the problem with children's lunch boxes happening at the min can tie in etc) (was an early cop idea)
10. External Collab -  don't have one....

collab - food - cook book thing - mixing cultures zine maybe??


what I want to solve/make

branding, illustrative work
for portfolio ; baby range, cards, stationary, branding etc

branding/persona for a blogger or youtube
taking a surface pattern designers work and making a zine.... doing something w it ...
perhaps branding something and then using their patterns??

First one to one meeting

• Don't need a history of it necessarily - just having case studies that show different eras of western mascots - how things have changed etc 
• Define kawaii, can mention it just talk about Japanese culture more so
• Where do we see brands - nowadays its less tv ads due to Netflix etc but more on social media
• Edf energy bulb as a case study? - friendly 
• What has changed - visual culture 
• Churchill - social media change and time - the skateboard thing because of the social media dog 
• In intro talk about what is contemporary - define, what has changed (the landscape) and what are mascots. 
• A more defined structure for next meeting
• Have a lot to talk about and can see in the structure 
• Perhaps start writing the intro 
• The practical relates well and is interesting as I have the theory and content for it - will be the fun part 
• Bring pics of old mascots for next meeting

Planning

simplicity & consistency = productive

3 big outcomes a week, 3 tasks in a day

priority based on money worth

develop new habits one at a time 

set annual goals - into a weekly system 

discipline but don't be unrealistic 

have downtime - accounted for

priorities week/day 

putting a value against each task

pomodoro - 25 minutes, 5 min break - when 4th cycle give 15 min break

eat the frog - start the day with the most daunting task - 100% focus till complete 

getting things done - next action, someday maybe, waiting for. Clarity and understand - team work flow

• stickies - Mac sticky notes
• Teux - deux - browser tab
• Marinara - plug in chrome where you can set 25 mins
• self control app - put websites to ban for a certain amount of time
• Toggs - log what was doing in time 

Annual goals:

draw every week - design that I enjoy outside of uni

Weekly timetable

In the session we made a weekly timetable to help see how we have allocated time to manage day to day tasks and to create the bigger picture. The advice for the weekly timetable was to not make it overly specific and to have broad allocations, such as research for cop.  

reflection

With creating the weekly timetable, it was apparent that this method doesn't work for me due to liking a daily tick list instead. However, I will try to incorporate the weekly timetable due to it being better for thinking ahead rather than stuck in day to day tasks and to reflect on where I can fit in these daily tasks. 

From the session I tried using the pomodoro method and it worked pretty well and I managed to stay focused on the work I was doing. The only downside of the method however was that once there was a distraction or a break in the cycle it was very hard to start the 25 minutes again and the longer I kept going the more distracted I was getting. So perhaps I should give longer breaks or work for a longer amount of time until I become distracted. 

Audience/users/consumers

Who's in charge? article:

how they approached surveys, primary research and their findings

Who was involved in the study?

The author of the asthma was the facilitator - 12 foundation staff, 5 post graduate graphic design students

What arguments does the article make?

value of co-design to put aside
participant differences while sharing ideas.
co-design aids the discovery of important tacit information
which would not have surfaced without end-user creative participation.
intuition shouldn't be relied on -- incorporate knowledge from the audience and end users

What suggestions is the author making in relation to how we practice design?

games - helped set them at ease

utilising these games In the co design process creates a more beneficial atmosphere for sharing
strategies that designers can use

What is textual analysis 

analysis a text - radio, tv, film (media studies)
they look into semiotics
texts and who's reading it - the image and who's seeing it etc etc
examples - analysing but also thinking about what other people will see - who's target audience etc


examples - what they mean to the target audience
demographics - age, gender, profession, education, sexual orientation (target consumer)
psychographics - personality, values, opinions, attitudes, lifestyle (creating a persona)
brands want to see a lifestyle - to mould against the lifestyle - cain changed a visual identity to go with the consumers lifestyle

Apple
creatives
mainstream
professional, connected, organised, creative
trend follower, likes the finer things (as more expensive)

Hobbycraft
family values, coffee mornings, etsy store, middle aged and younger, perhaps families
friendly branding

qualitative/quantitative (data gathering)

Quantitative - numerical data (expressing as percentages)
Qualitative - emotional/personal (questionnaire, survey, interview)

perhaps stick to multiple choice as it makes it easier to collate
could look at it generally - but doesn't reflect on process????
thematic analysis
review the findings
coding - coming up with phrases of what has been said - into common areas/themes
primary research for essay/practical or both

Research - Brand mascots that have dissapeared

Twinkie the kid
Twinkie the Kid is the mascot for Twinkies, Hostess's golden, cream-filled snack cakes. He is a registered trademark of Hostess Brands. He made his debut in 1971. He has appeared on product packaging, in commercials, and as collectible related merchandise except for a brief period between 1988 and 1990.

Campbell kids 

As long as the Campbell Soup Company has been advertising its soups nationally, it has been marketing based on appeal to children. The Campbell Soup Kids first appeared in 1905, 
They were enormously popular, and other companies scrambled to win the rights to manufacture them. They were sold in many stores, such as Montgomery Ward and Sears. If a child in those days owned a doll, it was quite likely to be a Campbell Kids doll.
Through it all, the kids appeared on anything and everywhere, such as balloons, calendars, canisters, cards, clocks, cookbooks, cookie jars, games, decals, dishes, hats, lamps, buttons, lunch boxes, mugs, napkins, ornaments, playing cards, pins, plates, posters, T-shirts thermoses, toys, watches, and many, many other items. Up until 1921, the kids would appear in pretty much every advertisement Campbell ran.

The noid

In 1986, advertising agency Group 243 was tasked with creating a mascot for Domino’s Pizza. Their creation–the Noid–was one of the most inexplicably popular mascots in corporate history. But in a case of branding gone bad, the Noid’s rise plummeted when he inspired a real-life crime by a schizophrenic namesake.
the Noid was a Hamburglar-like character wholly devoted to delaying pizza deliveries. Only Domino’s Pizza, the ad campaign claimed, delivered pizzas that were “Noid-proof.” Avoid the Noid by ordering from Domino’s and get your pizza in 30 minutes or less.
The Noid was a strange character to capture the cultural zeitgeist, but in the 1980s, he was popular enough to earn not just one, but two separate video games, as well as dominate a line of toys and merchandise. The Noid’s bizarre popularity was probably helped by the fact that Domino’s Pizza chose Will Vinton Studios–creators of the California Raisins–to bring the Noid to life through Claymation.

(not my own words)

Case study - Bringing back Homepride man

marketing week ; 2014

Homepride is back on TV screens after a 10-year hiatus with a £2.3m ad push that aims to celebrate its 50th anniversary and the relaunch of the brand with a new strapline ‘Everybody loves Homepride’.

reintroduces Homepride’s brand mascot Fred as a 6-foot puppet that helps out during family mealtime. He was previously a small animated character. Fred also features more prominently on Homepride’s new packaging, taking a position in the centre of the label. He will also be brought to life via radio and in-store activity, as well as in a social campaign that will see the Fred puppet go into people’s homes to help them with cooking.

Helen Warren-Piper, savoury business unit director at Homepride owner Premier Foods, says the company had initially considered ditching Fred because “we thought he might be a bit outdated”. However, in focus groups they found that mums still associated the character with the brand and so decided to keep him.

The change with this campaign is that Fred is now a real character, brought to life by a professional puppeteer who has worked on films including Gravity and Star Wars.

marketing week - re brand of mascots

marketing week.com

Despite the refreshed image, the brand has retained its well-known Captain Birds Eye character on packaging, albeit with an updated design. Chantry explains that the high recognition scores and consumer affection for the character compelled the company to keep him. This was also the experience of cooking sauce brand Homepride, which relaunched its 50-year-old brand character Fred in a new TV campaign on 21 September (main image, top).

Helen Warren-Piper, savoury director at Premier Foods, Homepride’s parent company, says her team initially toyed with the idea of ditching Fred as part of its relaunch but it was met with strong opposition in focus groups. “The reaction from women when we showed them the new creative was ‘where’s Fred?’” she says.

The popularity of brand characters such as the Churchill insurance dog or the meerkats that promote Comparethemarket.com show the value of easily identifiable brand icons. Insurance brand Columbus Direct elected to retain its own dog character when it redesigned earlier this year.

“Like the meerkats, Columbus is a memory icon,” says managing director Greg Lawson. “The growth of content marketing as a discipline demands the creation of brand personality, and that’s what we have tried to bring together.”

The company is expanding its offer from travel insurance to other areas such as home and breakdown cover. To reflect this, the company has refreshed its image by turning its 2D Columbus the dog into a CGI creation that will feature in TV advertising due to launch in November.

“We are looking at unprompted awareness and the extent to which people trust the brand,” he says.

Case study - Bringing back churchill (mascot) 2019

Branding forum.com
source : https://brandingforum.org/branding/churchill-gets-cgi-makeover/

Churchill have replaced the nodding Churchill mascot in their latest campaign for a CGI version.The insurance company, whose nodding dog was reminiscent of Winston Churchill, wanted to revamp the brand without losing the image of the dog, who was a key feature of the company.

The original nodding mascot whose catchphrase “Oh, yes” became synonymous with the insurance brand, was introduced in 1996 and voiced by Bob Mortimer. In this rebrand, the company hope to reach a younger, modern audience, with a CGI version of the dog, that doesn’t speak. 

“The brand is seen as dependable and reliable but lacked any real distinctiveness. The market is cluttered and commoditised, so we need a modern and culturally relevant brand to ensure that we stand out from the crowd and gain that valuable click on a price comparison site.” Marketing Week, head of marketing, Lucy Brooksbank.

Marketing Week.com

Churchill is relaunching its brand with a new look and feel, and a campaign that aims to modernise perceptions and help it stand out in a crowded insurance market where price has come to dominate. Its nodding brand mascot, Churchie, has been given a CGI makeover in order to make him fresher and more relevant to a modern audience.

The relaunch comes after audience research found that while Churchill was the ‘most-liked’ insurance brand it was starting to “lose its edge”. That was particularly a problem given that most people start their journey to buying insurance on price comparison websites, where price is the most important attribute.

Modernising Churchie was seen as key to that. Brooksbank admits Churchill’s brand is “heavily reliant” on its mascot but that he was starting to be seen as “dated and old-fashioned”.

“Our audience’s relationship with the brand is only skin deep, heavily reliant on the love of the dog, but even his star was starting to fade,” explains Brooksbank. “An updated Churchill the dog was key to modernising the brand and remaining relevant.”

For the campaign, Churchill wanted to elicit an emotional approach, while also addressing perceptions of insurance companies as “out of touch” and “distant”. The aim was to show a brand that does the hard work so customers can chill, safe in the knowledge they are covered by its products.

The hope is that by eliciting an emotional response to the ad, when people visit a price comparison site they will be predisposed to pick Churchill.

“We know that our communications will be at its most powerful if we elicit an emotional response. This was our opportunity to create a big leap forward in brand values and to radically change how people see Churchill.”

“We want the new, ‘supercharged’ Churchill to deliver greater substance to the brand by reigniting that emotional connection, and helping people feel that we understand what matters to them,” says Brooksbank.

“This is an opportunity to recreate the powerful feelings of affinity that many have for the beloved mascot and take a leap forward in radically changing how people see Churchill,” Brooksbank concludes.

Patrick Thomas Talk

• Travelling by train
• Graphic artist, author, educator in Germany
• From Liverpool - Saint Martins Graphic Design BA - got into animation and a passion for print
• Went to Barcelona after graduation - met olympic mascot designer - COBI - documented the process of the mascot in a published book
• sketchbooks for process
• Andy Warhol posters
• Does his own work on silkscreen presses 
• 2 published books - 2005 and 2011
• Has a reasoning for all type used 
• Concerned about climate - design is always a political act - designers are responsible for the consumerism in society - carrier of messages
• in 2008/10 Patrick Thomas studio in Berlin
• worked for Desigual and Abbey road studios
• News & people giving headlines via a QR code, which gets sent in with the real news and gets mixed up and printed with projectors all over the room
• Protest stencil toolkit - stencils that can be used for usual statements 
• Banner inspires activism - posters don't really engage - t-shirts do 
• Open collab - printing/accidental/layer
• Newspaper as a medium - freezes a moment in time, each is unique, overprint (edit)
• He has a moral responsibility - good way of trying to change things - platform with a like to provoke 
• You can't go wrong at art uni - the most time and freedom you'll have - collab 

Research - 1You’re so lovable: Anthropomorphism and brand love

You’re so lovable: Anthropomorphism and brand love


PA Rauschnabel, AC Ahuvia - Journal of Brand Management, 2014 

The primary definition of anthropomorphism is ‘the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of non-human agents with human- like characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions’ (Epley et al, 2007, p. 864).

First, the word ‘anthropomorphism’ usually refers to anthropomorphic thinking – that is, per- ceiving a product, brand or other object as having human characteristics (Waytz et al, 2010a), whereas anthropomorphic product features are of interest primarily as ways of stimulating anthropomorphic thinking

(Epley et al, 2007). 

The prior literature has amply demonstrated that consumers have a strong tendency to engage in anthropomorphic thinking, as they mentalize brands, products and objects of all sorts (Kiesler, 2006

Furthermore, because of social media, WOM (or word- of-mouse) is even more important than it was in the past.

Prior research suggests five theoretical mechanisms linking anthropomorphism to brand love: category-level evaluation, cog- nitive fluency, cognitive consistency, close relationships as self-extension and self-con- gruence.

When objects get placed in the human category, people may evaluate them based on that category membership (Aggarwal and McGill, 2007), and see them in a positive light.

Finally, Ahuvia (1993) found that consumers fre- quently reason as follows: ‘since I desire to be an excellent person, I should construct my identity out of excellent things’. Hence, if something is viewed as excellent, people are more likely to include it within their desired self-identity.

As people havea lot of knowledge about human behavior, they use this knowledge to understand the product in question, they engage in anthro- pomorphic thinking.

Anthropomorph- ism also increases cognitive fluency (Delbaereet al, 2011), which makes consumers feel better when thinking about the brand and motivates them to use products or brands more intensively – aspects of the positive emotional attachment and passion-driven behavior dimensions of brand love

showed that consumers love brands more when they see the brand not just as a person, but also as a person like themselves.

We identified four promising ways to increase the level of perceived anthro- pomorphism of brands, some of which have extent research support and the rest of which serve as suggestions for future work:
1. Communicate in the first person: It is likely that first-person slogans such as ‘Hello, I am the brand X’ will increase anthropo- morphism, whereas third-person claims do not (Aggarwal and McGill, 2007). These finding may have influenced marketers for Lindt chocolates, who recently launched a new line of chocolates with packaging that talks in the first person (for example, ‘Hello, my name is Nougat Crunch’).
2. Use of stimuli that imitate human character- istics: This approach is already widely used in the auto industry, where manu- facturers often imitate a human face when designing the front of a car. Logos, or pictures of the product in advertising, can also reference human characteristics, or be pictured engaging in human activ- ities (Delbaere et al, 2011). Some brands, such as ‘Ralph Lauren’ or ‘Mr. Proper’consist of real or fictitious human names.
3. Createastrongbrandpersonality:Onepoten- tial way to do that is to use testimonials or celebrity spokespeople, whose per- sonality may spill over onto the brand. When doing this, the brand personality should be congruent with the target market (Sirgy, 1982; Malär et al, 2011).
4. Interact through social media: A brand can launch a brand page on Facebook, and thus directly converse with users. Posting and discussing ‘as a brand’ with consu- mers (and not, for example, as a sales representative) might be another way of increasing anthropomorphism.

Nick workshop - process

This workshop was based around process and producing an outcome. Using the typefaces ; Neue haas grotesque bold, Baskerville bold and Cooper Black parts were took to create a stencil with new shapes. With the stencil and using black paint, a design was created, considering blank space, the gradient of the paint, overlapping, pattern etc. The workshop highlighted the importance of process and to reflect on what you're doing within the design process. Important to see the different ways of making things with the same concept and to keep reflecting.

Brand Mascots: And Other Marketing Animals

Stephen Brown, Sharon Ponsonby-McCabe

Routledge, 27 Jun 2014

The Honey Monster, the Milky Bar Kid, Captain Birdseye, Bertie Basset, the Tango Man and Tetley's tannin-addled tea folks all had their supporters. The runaway winners with 20 per cent of the total vote, were the PG Tips Chimps, spokes-simians for Britains premier brand of tea. The nattering troupe made their first television appearance in 1956.


Cadburys drumming gorilla boosted the sales of Dairy Milk by 9 per cent or so. It also did much to restore the reputation of Cadburys which had been hit by contamination incidents and food hygiene scared at the firms venerable factory in Bournville.

Cohen(2014) claims that a seven - category continuum of brand embodiment, ranging from cartoon characters and costumed actors to depersonalised people and fictitious human figureheads, can be readily identified beneath the mascot morass.

According to Miles(2014), the popularity of Orlov's progress is attributable to the societal contradictions that the campaign raises and assuages. In accordance with Holt's (2004) principles of cultural branding, he contends that the simmering issue of rising immigration, especially from Eastern European members of the ever-growing EU, is addressed and alleviated by the mocked and mocking meerkat. 

Aleksandr's iconicity, however, can't be divorced from Britains class-conscious tradition of comic characters-cum-grotesques, as well as its legacy of much-loved brand mascots (carter 2012). The meerkats virtuoso use of social media and the new communication channels opened up by Web 2.0 are equally integral to its cultural ascendency. As Callcott and Lee (1995) recount, the rise and demise of iconic brand mascots owes much to the emergence and diffusion of new media, whether it be newspapers in the Gilded age, radio and film in the 1920s and the 1930s, commercial television in the early-post war era, or the digital technologies of today. 

Technological change, clearly, is crucial to brand mascot's advance and retreat. Nostalgia is an important factor too (Warner 2007). Aleksandr Orlov and his merry menagerie of copycat critters is more than a contrarian embodiment of cut-price insurance cover. He's an incarnation-reincarnation, rather - of previous generations of brand animals. 

Just as old soldiers never die, brand mascots live forever in the forests, fields and fjords of consumer memory, pining for the days when they were king of the marketing jungle. Just as Orlov is today, just as Churchill the bulldog once was, just as the honey monster once was, just as the energiser bunny once was, just as spuds Mackenzie once was, just as the Budweiser frogs once were.

 Pictoplasma, a touring exhibition devoted to newly invented brand mascots, likewise features a Michelin man clone called 'the missing link'. They adore the incontrovertible fact that mascots are 'the gift that keeps on giving. They never get into trouble with the law. They don't up their fees. You can use them for a long, long time'(Schultz 2012). Edicts are issued about what a brand mascot can or can't do, or be seen doing, and policed with zero - tolerance intensity (Shalit 2000). The Pillsbury Doughboy, for instance, is a helper, a teacher, a friend; he would never do anything mischievous or engage in activities that are improper.

That said, there's more to mascots' popularity than consumer nostalgia and managerial adoration. There's a deeper driving force; humankind's anthropomorphic urge. We interpret the world in human terms and have done so since the dawn of time (Guthrie 1993). Today's pirated blockbuster movies like cars, Madagascar and ice age, with their sequels and spin-offs and ancillaries and appetising Happy meal deals, the imputation of human characteristics to the animal, vegetable and mineral things that surround us is ever-present and ineradicable (Neal 1985). Granted, there had been much academic debate on the causes and characteristics of anthropomorphism (Avis et al 2012).

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Barriers exercise

In today's session we identified as a class what our biggest barriers that are holding us back were. To do so, we all wrote our worries down on post it notes in the space of a minute. We then chose the top three biggest worriers. With having these worries we then as a class came up with categorisations and stuck our post it notes to where we see fit.

As a class we identified that our biggest barrier was not feeling good enough and not having enough skills.

This session was helpful for Alec to understand what our class concerns our to tailor sessions around these but also to myself due to finding it somewhat comforting knowing that most of us share the same worries and concerns even though many don't show it. 

When Brands Seem Human, Do Humans Act Like Brands?

When Brands Seem Human, Do Humans Act Like Brands? Automatic Behavioral Priming Effects of Brand Anthropomorphism
P Aggarwal, AL McGill - Journal of consumer research, 2011 

Anthropomorphism 

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics and features to nonhuman creatures and be- ings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states or objects, and even abstract concepts (Epley, Waytz, and Ca- cioppo 2007). 

For example, prod- ucts have often been given humanlike characteristics to make them more distinctive and memorable and to make them more endearing and likeable.

Similarly, brands are known to have distinctive humanlike personality traits (Aaker 1997).

In fact, brand managers often encourage this phenomenon of anthropomorphizing by creating brand characters, mas- cots, and spokespeople such as the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Green Giant, Tony the Tiger, or the more contemporary Geico Gecko.

Brands are given faces and names, and they are endowed with human emotions. Brand names are some- times chosen to conjure up imagery of real people (e.g., Mr. Kleen or Mrs. Fields), and brand communication often in- volves using first-person language as if the brand were talk- ing directly to the consumers as people do.

Driving Customer Appeal Through the Use of Emotional Branding

Garg, Ruchi, Chhikara, Ritu, Panda, Tapan Kumar, Kataria, Aarti

IGI Global, 13 Sep 2017

They have personalities like people, which makes them reach consumers emotionally. The personification of brands is a form of anthropomorphism.
The history and role of mascots and present day usage encourages understanding of how narratives are a positive and promising tool for marketing communication professionals 

Graphic Design for the real world ? article example

Graphic Design for the real world ?

Visual communication’s potential in design activism and design for social change

What is the main argument of the article?

The approach aims to be activist by designers but doesn't necessarily use the right approach - not always executed. Persuasive activism (mimics corporate strategy - not giving positive change) and visual communication as information (gives the user more control to interpret)

What is the main theoretical framework for the article?
social theory - social change

What types of design do they critique?
advertising (campaigns)

What might you as a designer take from this?

Visual communication’s potential in design activism and design for social change

what approach from this - a model - approving how graphic design works - how can empower

The graphic thing

what is thingness as it relates to graphic design?
graphic design invades the meaning process


what is the main argument? What can graphic designers take from the research?
Things are things as we give them meaning

Can you identify a coherent theoretical framework in the article?
too elaborate - talking about scientific etc etc

good in advertising - breaking the rules - adopting the thingness approach
categorises in perception .....

The future of print design relies on interaction 

How does this research article differ from the previous two?

not a question - informative, project based on research and critical 

What is the main aim or argument of the research?

make print more interactive 

Does the author utilise a theoretical framework?

Northern Craft Fair

Today I went to the Northern Craft fair which features small creatives from the north. It was good to see all the different products and avenues of arts from locals, including Mike from the print room. Due to wanting to excel with my Etsy store after my degree, it was beneficial to see the array of talent in different areas and the products which I could create with my artwork in the future! From the day I also bought some artwork, a pin, sticker and to do pad to support local businesses. 

The Infantilization of the Postmodern Adult and the Figure of Kidult

Jacopo BERNARDINI
Postmodern Openings, 2014, Volume 5, Issue 2, June, pp: 39-55

As recently stated by Samuelson (2003), we are living in an era in which it is practically normal to refuse to accept one's own age, an era that is characterized by young people who want to be adults and adults who want to be young.

he main target remains the adult for at least two reasons: his economic resources and the massive presence in the population. The promotion of the infantilization by the market has this aspiration: to foster the regression of the desires of the consumer in order to make them more compatible with a capitalist logic based on surplus production and equality of the products.
Not only that. As recently shown (Bernardini, 2012), the economic promotion of an infantilist ethos has widely influenced the major social and mass media contexts. Television schedules, for example, have gradually lost their original pedagogic and cultural depth in favor of fun and entertainment; the movie industry is increasingly focused onkidult movies, sequels, remakes, comics and cartoon superheroes at the expense of the complexity of plot and dialog; in publishing one sees motivational books and novels apparently addressed to children or adolescents (think of the Harry Potter phenomenon); Internet use, by adults, seems to be increasingly linked to ludic motivations, especially through social networks, while that of video games has assumed a nostalgic-escapist function that promotes the regression of the adult male to a utopian world of fantasy and virility, and to the consequent escape from family obligations and social responsibilities (Burrill, 2008).

The Birth of a New Social Figure: the Kidult

The kidult, therefore, may be considered to be the evolutionary peak of the postmodern changes linked to the socio-media infantilization, to the weaknesses in adult value models as a historical- generational consequence and to the social and psychological reproposal of an infantilist and youthful ethos.

reading texts - their abstracts

Abstracts of texts:

Graphic Design for the Real World?
Visual communication’s potential in design activism and design for social change

Thereafter it discusses persuasive tendencies in graphic design and ques-
tions if its current contribution to design activism is limited to its predominant narrow role of persuad-ing for “the good cause.”

Co-experience: user experience as interaction

This paper reviews various existing
approaches to understanding user experience and describes three main
approaches and their differences. It builds on an existing approach but borrows from symbolic interactionism to create a more inclusive interactionist framework for thinking about user experiences. Data from a study on mobile multimedia messaging are used to illustrate and
discuss the framework.

The future of print design relies on interaction

We compiled a list for both technologies with common media and their respective descriptions. Such
explanation helps to establish transitions of digital interaction and user involvement, for print media. In order to verify this effect, we developed a graphic design project. It was designed to allow a different use, based on experiences taken from digital artefacts. Though confined to communication needs, the result provides details on structure, organization and handling.

The Graphic Thing Ambiguity, Dysfunction, and Excess in Designed Objects

I approach what we call “things” as mental constructs that emerge in processes of meaning-
making rather than as entities that exist independently of human comprehension.
Objects can therefore be linked more readily to existing knowledge (apperception) and to familiar frames of reference and scenarios. In what ways do we experience “thingness” in graphic design objects, and how does this relate to issues of materiality and transparency in graphic communication? In this article, I mobilize concepts from cognitive linguistics to explain how our apperception of objects can be subverted through design strategies such as exaggerating the physical qualities of artifacts or contravening conventions. I will use examples of graphic design to illustrate how these strategies can, at some level, disrupt our understanding of graphic objects

Who’s in charge? End-users challenge graphic designers’ intuition through visual verbal co-
design

Three co-design activities are presented, as part of a larger project, revealing insights for the next generation of graphic designers. A visual verbal game dissolved participant status barriers, a persona scenario activity uncovered the real brief and a mix and match card game suspended participant politics. The findings suggest that co-designing with end-users, challenges graphic designers’ use of intuition, as new ways of categorizing asthma information material were revealed that previous
design-led processes had overlooked. This study confirms the rich contribution of end-users’ creativity, when designers relinquish creative control, ultimately revealing co-design as a valuable approach for graphic designers engaging in bottom-up design processes.