Consumer & Culture
Second Year University Project
Second Year University Project
The brief for this project had the aim of designing an advertisement poster for a new Branding and packaging exhibition at the V&A in London. The project was inspired by a seminal exhibition that was held at the V&A from 19 October 2000 - 14 January 2001. Brand.New took a challenging look at contemporary consumer culture and the proliferation of brand identities, which affect all our daily lives at the beginning of the 21st century. I wanted to look at the idea that many people use brands to portray an image of themselves that reflects who they are as a person and whether they are being 'truthful' or 'lying' by doing so. My posters focus on the idea that smoking is 'cool' and thats why people chose to smoke despite the heath risks behind smoking. The question behind my posters is, is smoking really cool? Does it really tell you anything about that persons personality? I did my posters in the style of 1950s pop art because it's a style I love, but also because back in the 1950s, people could get away with saying almost anything they wanted in advertising even if it wasn't true, such as smoking being good for you and helping you get through the day. I found this amusing but thought it would be a good way to shock people today, so I thought it worked quite well. The posters work together as a pair, like a conversation between the man and the woman. It was part of the brief to have one poster that was positive and one that was negative to show 'anti-branding' Here, the poster with the woman is the positive poster and the one with the man is the negative poster. They are both printed A1 size.
