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Bad Apple

So here is the final version. The images have been kept untouched instead of being traced. This looks a lot sharper and less abstract which is an important convention of Apple adverts. As for the tagline we decided to go for some repetition so it would stick in the readers head. We also kept the words short and simple with 2 words max to a sentence. Then each part is a quantity so more then less and then same. I was pleased with how we managed to convey the message in such a small statement. Overall I felt that the design really followed the conventions of that of Apple adverts and I am looking forward to hanging up our work on display for everyone to see tomorrow.

Brandalism has been a very interesting topic to cover. It has really altered my perspective on marketing. Whenever I see an advert now not only will I pay more attention to the product and message but I will consider how this advert could manipulate the consumer. In retrospect I feel that me and Renato have worked well together and really pulled off an effective piece here.

Here is our penultimate version printed on Pearl photographic paper. We were really pleased with how it came out except for one small detail. The images were both traced so that they would not appear pixelated. This however makes the image a little unclear on what it is showing and also takes away from the professional element of the appearance of our poster. We decided we had time to do one more version. This would need to be the last alteration though as we were getting ever closer to the deadline.

So after a lot of work to get the image to clip correctly, the penultimate version was complete. By tracing the image we were able to keep the resolution high. I skewed the perspective tooth match the orientation of the iPhone. This was the first one we printed out in full A2. Overall we were happy with the outcome when viewed on the computer but once printed we decided to make some changes.

After a while researching into the mining impact of minerals I noticed a few images and articles pointing out that children are being employed in the Congo to mine Cobalt and various other minerals for the phones. This made me decide that the poster could relate mainly to this issue of Child Labour. I chose this image in particular as I felt cropping it to a portrait version would not lose any of the key elements of the photograph. Also this was one of the higher resolution images depicting these young miners. Then it was time to implement this into the poster.

I decided it would be a good idea to demonstrate some of Apple’s other advertisements.

The top one depicts the Macbook Air. The image is a metaphor that depicts it being practically weightless hence how it appears to be floating away. This is a very simple yet effective image in terms of meaning and appearance. From this angle you can also see a great deal of the Macbook, most importantly the thickness of it which at the time of release was a big part of the appeal due to how thin it was compared to other products.

The second advert is for the iPhone X so the predecessor to the XS that we went for. No overcomplicated imagery or text, just basic words and colours. This is what I am trying to replicate. So far I have come close but not close and concise enough for me to be happy to submit the poster.

After the first day of working with the iPhone image I came up with 2 prototypes. The first prototype was me working with text and placement. I wrote up a basic statement to keep to the minimalistic approach of other Apple marketing campaigns. For this prototype I decided to keep the picture the same just to ensure the general layout conformed to these campaigns too. The black background allows the phone to really stick out of the poster and attract people in. This simplicity ensures that when people look at it they immediately think ‘that’s an Apple advert’.

When it came to the second prototype things started to change. I wanted to keep the planetary theme of the original but give it a twist to adapt on the slogan. I thought that the initial slogan was a little over complicated in terms of how it rolled off the tongue. This inspired me to strip it back even further until it became, Same phone. More minerals. Then I created a clipping mask of the phone screen in Photoshop that would allow me to replace the colourful planet with something else. I then took a photo of Earth and layered a desert planet over the top of it. After blending this to make the planet look like it was dying, I used the clipping mask to fit it to the phone screen. I was really pleased with how this looked visually however I felt that the overall message was unclear and therefore began working on a similar topic but from a different perspective.

So to begin working on our new design, we first had to decide on a product to target. In the end we went for the iPhone XS which was released recently. This is because we feel that Apple have this branding ability that means consumers will buy the new iPhone despite it only being a fraction different from the previous one. The image itself is very simplistic but also very captivating. I think the use of colour to show off the screen and to add vibrancy is a very nice touch which could be a focal point of our work. This is a good starting point for our second attempt at the poster.

New Developments

After some discussion over the complexity of our first prototype we have made the decision to start over. This time we are planning to take a much more minimalistic route so that the viewer can understand the message immediately. Our inspiration for this has come from looking at other works of Brandalism and adverts for Apple products. We are actually planning now to make a fake poster advertising iPhone to aim our aggression at one specific company.

So here is the mockup design for our first prototype of our poster. I have used the aforementioned method of dividing some of the logos into smaller elements. Some of the brands I have used include McDonald’s and Google. I chose these as Google is obviously the leader in terms of internet browsers so a high volume of searches go through them. If I asked a question using Google then the provided answer would likely be what I would believe. There is a high level of trust going on here in this system which could be abused to manipulate the actions of its users. I also used some of the bands I researched when choosing logos. The question I had to ask myself was, do all these companies control us through the media? At first I thought they did but in retrospect I think the overall message is a little overcomplicated and unclear. Unless I can resolve this I may scrap the plan to use this poster. It was a good starting point though and sort of broke the ice for me and my partner so now we’re really getting into some good work.

After some deep research today I stumbled across this video about glasses that block out LED and LCD screens. I think this is very cool despite being simple physics. Essentially the light waves are travelling perpendicular to the gratings of the glasses lenses so they do not pass through. This is why they block these images out. The process of this is called polarisation. It would be interesting to conduct a study to see how people would conduct themselves without these companies pushing products onto people. The glasses were developed over approximately a year and were designed to replicate the glasses from the movie They Live! IRL labs put forward a very good point by saying, “It’s a product that puts us in the drivers seat to control technology. Not the other way around.” It brings us back to this idea that everything we do is manipulating even slightly by advertising and corporate greed. A product like this would be so important to me in the respect that it would have a major positive impact on socialising. People wouldn’t be tempted to look at their phones or at the TV screens if there was nothing to watch. It would get people talking again and conversing properly, a skill which we seem to be losing over time as the digital age takes over...

So I decided it would be a good idea to demonstrate the process I went through of create these snippets of logos for our statement. So I start off with either a .png or .jpeg image and add it to the workspace. Then using a tool called image trace I convert the image into lots of shapes essentially that are a much higher resolution. These can then be scaled without losing integrity. I then begin removing the key elements in this case the extra letters. I do this by first removing the solid object and then erasing the nodes that make the outline in the outer shapes. Once this is done I would crop the outside shapes to remove the empty space and make it look like a standard logo once again.

So here’s the second installment of our video updates. This one is from the 10th of October so a whole week has passed already! We’re well on our way to completion and we can’t wait to show you the final product.

Here is our first vlog filmed on the 3rd of October. I had some corruption issues on my memory card hence the delayed upload. Enjoy!

So after a long time researching potential quotes and statements to use for our poster, I settled with this quote from the 14th Dalai Lama. What he says is very important and almost directly relates to the research I did around Brandalism. This idea that to ridicule or dramatically alter something, you must first have a decent understanding of it. I think that’s very important when it comes to today's society. People will criticise things that even they do not really understand. Not only does this paint the wrong picture for the victim but it’s detrimental for for accuser as well and can seriously affect reputation. The fact that this rebellious quote came from the Dalai Lama is another great reason it was chosen. For someone so spiritual and peaceful to still say things like this is astounding to me. As I incorporate more brands into the poster I will update to show how this message is conveyed in a Brandalism style.

So today consisted of some research into the punk rock music era I have previously mentioned. Whilst looking at the more controversial side of things I came across a song I hadn’t listened to for a long time. God Save The Queen is a piece written and performed by The Sex Pistols. It was their second single and was conveniently released during Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in the year of 1977. The song has long been frowned upon by the royalists and mainstream media of the UK due to it’s hard hitting message of a “fascist regime” and “no future in England’s dreaming”. The interesting element of this is that it went straight to No.1 on the NME music charts but only made it to No.2 on the UK singles chart. A large amount of people still make accusations that this was a fix due to the UK singles chart being used by the BBC who had banned the song from being played on their radio stations. This is very important when it comes to a country controlled by the media. A No.2 sounds far less appealing than a No.1 in the music world so perhaps the BBC did this to decrease the popularity of the song. The song is ranked at #175 in the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. This is down to a mix of being a genuinely good song and it’s message. Either way, depending on your views, some of the aspects are just as relevant today as they were 41 years ago, and that’s a fair achievement considering the advancement of the world in that time period.

So today me and Renato worked on the final elements of our brainstorming phase of our poster and what elements we are both going to contribute. We’ve decided the main feature of the poster is going to be a statement written out by chunks of brand logos, similar to that of a Dadaist poem. This contributes to our idea of a rebellion. We’re having the statement as the central focal point in the poster. To accompany this we will add collages of famous movements and pieces of literature around the outside with the aim that people will be drawn in by the writing and will move on to study the additional material. We’re considering adding some subliminal messaging to this piece. We have also filmed a little update video covering this in more detail which will be posted soon. More to come and our ideas are really coming together now. The second image demonstrates the illustration techniques I have used to remove elements of these famous band logos.

Just from the logos of the two bands I chose, a clear message was immediately conveyed. The lettering differs on both but they both represent a form of rebellion. In the Sex Pistols logo it appears as if the letters have been pulled out of nowhere and just strung together randomly to lose a sense of what the original message was saying. This is very much pointing towards Dadaism, one of the driving forces of the punk rock era. As for The Clash, the letters are awkwardly drawn and are weathered to give the look of a sticker that someone has tried to scratch off. This is an interesting interpretation of how the system tries to rub out anomalies or “rebels”. I will be looking at some more of the discography tomorrow for more information relating to brandalism.

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