Although today’s trends are evolving, marketing tactics are rolling back into a simpler style— minimalism. The understated art form was first expressed in New York, through paintings and large sculptures as a rebellion against artists’ expectations, such as a plethora of colors and an outburst in emotion. Hence, the controversial matter of large, symmetric, and bland sculptures composed of industrial supplies was scrutinized by the art community. But with gradual appeal to the masses and normalized inclusion in other art forms, the condescending undertones paired with minimalism has gone away. Today, minimalism is applied to fashion, plays, products, and lifestyles. However, the most prominent area affected by minimalism is the advertising …show more content…
In the New York Times article, The Oppressive Gospel of ‘Minimalism’, millennial Kyle Chayka expresses his disdain towards minimalism’s trend and increasing incorporation in everyday life, deeming it to be, “expensive and exclusively branded by and for the elite.” In other words, Chayka discerns minimalism to only appeal towards millennials who have the financial freedom to rely on instant purchases rather than stocking for emergencies. Nonetheless, his stance does not recognize that minimalism does not aim to throw away everything in possession, but rather concentrate value upon few items to gain clarity in its worth. Hence, minimalism techniques in marketing and product values do not aim to exclude those who can’t afford it, but instead aim for consumers to consider its value in a single product. Value does not stem from price alone, but rarity, material, artistic context, design, and underlying connotations factor into its worth. Therefore, these non-explicit components in minimalist items are not considered by critics such as Kyle Chayka, and are deemed unnecessarily high without any contemplation. Another criticism against minimalism’s use in marketing is that it doesn’t give enough information for audience’s to be on the same page with reality. The point of minimalism is that the lack of information gives audiences full control over their own interpretations, and administering it in advertisements strengthens consumers’ power. Rather than giving deliberate features of an item, a minimalist ad would highlight its strengths, but allow audiences to extract its importance, whether it be personal or objective. Additionally, minimalism is employed to extract a degree of materialism in product advertising, since readers have to extrapolate potential experiences from items rather than worry about the costs. According to sociologist Joel
This essay is an analysis of two advertising posters, one of being a modern piece of media, the other being aimed at the previous generation. I will be reviewing posters from Coca Cola and Benetton, the latter being the modern piece of media in this comparison.
People are often deceived by some famous brands, which they will buy as useless commodities to feel they are distinctive. People require brands to experience the feeling of being special. People spend their money to have something from famous brands, like a bag from Coach or Louis Vuitton which they think they need, yet all that is just people’s wants. Steve McKevitt claims that people give more thought on features or brands when they need to buy a product, “It might even be the case that you do need a phone to carry out your work and a car to get around in, but what brand it is and, to a large extent, what features it has are really just want” (McKevitt, 145), which that means people care about brands more than their needs. Having shoes from Louis Vuitton or shoes that cost $30 it is designed for the same use.
This essay is a perfect example of the importance of a thorough introduction to provide the reader with a concise synopsis of what the paper intends to covers. Had Gladwell excelled in both areas he neglected, this would be an extremely interesting, thought-provoking look into the world of advertising. Works Cited Gladwell, M. (1997). The New Yorker. Listening to Khakis.
Richard Louv attempts to question the modern consumer culture of the United States by juxtaposing the complexity of purchasing a modern “Mercedes SUV” with the simplicity of staring out the window of a car. Louv uses a multitude of images to remind his audience ¬¬ who are likely the same age as he is ¬¬ of their childhood experiences. Louv also uses personal anecdotes to promote the drastic differences between simple wholesome actions and the modern consumer culture. His use of rhetorical questions also helps the reader in his/her attempt to understand that, “people no longer consider the physical world worth watching.” Louv’s use of technically specific words like, “municipalities” helps him to qualify his statements. The use of rhetorical
Have you ever seen an advertisement for a product and could immediately relate to the subject or the product in that advertisement? Companies that sell products are always trying to find new and interesting ways to get buyers and get people’s attention. It has become a part of our society today to always have products being shown to them. As claimed in Elizabeth Thoman’s essay Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, “…advertising offered instructions on how to dress, how to behave, how to appear to others in order to gain approval and avoid rejection”. This statement is true because most of the time buyers are persuaded by ads for certain products.
There are many people who are driven by consumerism, and many people who wish they could get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often encouraged to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage YouTube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges.
It’s often unacknowledged that there are designers that are behind creating and drawing out the designs we see on our everyday products, whether it be toilet paper, bleach, or a can of soup. There are people behind creating the enticing labels that urge us to crave and need that product. Andy Warhol shined a light on a whole world of unrecognised artists,
Wallerstein, K (1998) Thinness and Other Refusals in Contemporary Fashion Advertisements in Fashion Theory, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp.129–150. London: Berg. Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars.
Advertising in American culture has taken on the very interesting character of representing our culture as a whole. Take this Calvin Klein ad for example. It shows the sexualization of not only the Calvin Klein clothing, but the female gender overall. It displays the socially constructed body, or the ideal body for women and girls in America. Using celebrities in the upper class to sell clothing, this advertisement makes owning a product an indication of your class in the American class system. In addition to this, feminism, and how that impacts potential consumer’s perception of the product, is also implicated. Advertisements are powerful things that can convey specific messages without using words or printed text, and can be conveyed in the split-second that it takes to see the image. In this way, the public underestimates how much they are influenced by what they see on television, in magazines, or online.
In order to understand minimal artists’ tendency to produce objects and not images, we need to define minimalism. Michael Delahunt at Artlex (1) refers to minimalism as “A twentieth century style of art stressing the idea of reducing a work of art to the minimum number of colors, values, shapes, lines and textures”. But I think this definition does not completely reflect what minimal artists did. They did not get interested in ‘complex’ things as colors, values, lines etc.
While some people may claim to consider advertising a type of fine art, they seldom actually treat advertisements as such. One would be hard-pressed to find, for example, people at an upscale cocktail party who would rather talk about magazine ads than about Picassos, and while numerous homes have paintings hung over their mantles, I have yet to encounter a homeowner who frames advertisements, however well-done, in his or her living room. Even advertising executives shy away from the thought of calling their works “fine art,” with one advertiser stating in the trade magazine Adweek that he becomes “annoyed when people call [advertising] art […] it’s a very dopey notion to me, [as] you’re there to sell ideas or products” (Melillo). Of course,
CASE STUDY 3: COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY BACKGROUND Graphic design, as an applied discipline, is made up of various components including illustration, typography, and photography, with photography being the “most commonly used means of visual communication today” (Ryan, 2004) and having a large impact on our visual experience. Commercial photography involves taking pictures for commercial use, such as for selling a product, advertising, building brand stories and various other aspects. In today’s digital age, the field of commercial photography represents one way in which hipsterism has seeped into and influenced the digital side of commercial graphic design, where businesses are reacting to the popularity of the hipster trend by adopting its stylistic hallmarks. THE INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY HIPSTER CULTURE ON COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY 1.
The act of consumption has been the primary means through which individuals in society participate and transform culture. Culture is not something already made which we consume; culture is what society creates through practices of everyday life and consumption involves the making of culture. When attempting to understand certain acts of consumption it is necessary to observe the relations involved in production and consumption. Through technological innovation, the fashion industry has been expanded to play a prominent role in consumers’ purchasing decisions and styles are becoming less difficult to obtain. With the expansion of department stores and shopping being viewed as a leisurely activity, this has continued to transform the act of fashion consumerism. The functional interests feature a rational attachment to clothing items. Symbolic benefits involve status and prestige to fulfill the achievement for positive self-esteem. Further benefits include a provided experience for the individual consumer and the created use of imagery and desire used to enrich one’s life.
The United States is a country full of people from different backgrounds and beliefs with dreams of endless possibilities. Every single person is uniquely different in every way. Millennials are the luckiest people of America. They learn from their parents mistakes and have more opportunities than them. They get to choose their own career, sexual orientation, religion, and basic beliefs. One of those choices is their living arrangement. Many millennials would rather purchase experiences than things. This way of life is called Minimalism. The minimalistic lifestyle ignores the societal pressure to purchase the latest fashion trends. Minimalists focus on their personal goals in life and are not attached to physical belongings. Hoarders,
“The average family is bombarded with 1,100 advertisements per day … people only remembered three or four of them”. Fiske’s uses an example of kids singing Razzmatazz a jingle for brand of tights at a woman in a mini skirt. This displayed to the reader that people are not mindless consumers; they modify the commodity for their use. He rejects that the audiences are helpless subjects of unconscious consumerism. In contrast to McDonald’s, Fiske’s quoted “they were using the ads for their own cheeky resistive subculture” he added. He believed that instead of being submissive they twisted the ad into their own take on popular culture (Fiske, 1989, p. 31)