Brand Name Litter
Perusing the Flickr™ photo sharing web station for photos tagged with co-branded, I came across the Brand Name Litter pool, with photos from forty members (mostly Canadian) of branded garbage.
The project is an interesting one, and I found my favorite images were those that seemed to uncannily imitate the flat, two-dimensional graphic design of contemporary advertising. They almost seem to become anti-ads, or anti-brands, as the context is such a far cry from the heavily idealized one of billboards and TV spots, where brands are free to aspire to Utopian heights. The photos depict the logical conclusion of brand consumption, its fallout, its consequences and its actual relationship to the real world.
It is possible to have a creative response to the creative branding efforts of advertising firms and brand managers. It is even possible to take existing brand identities and appropriate them in ways unintended by their creators.
The project is an interesting one, and I found my favorite images were those that seemed to uncannily imitate the flat, two-dimensional graphic design of contemporary advertising. They almost seem to become anti-ads, or anti-brands, as the context is such a far cry from the heavily idealized one of billboards and TV spots, where brands are free to aspire to Utopian heights. The photos depict the logical conclusion of brand consumption, its fallout, its consequences and its actual relationship to the real world.
It is possible to have a creative response to the creative branding efforts of advertising firms and brand managers. It is even possible to take existing brand identities and appropriate them in ways unintended by their creators.