OUGD401: Studio Brief 2: Research

Visual research :

This design was done by Shepard Fairley, 300,000 posters were created and over 1 million stickers.  The piece is a silhouette stencil type of piece of barrack Obama’s face using the word ‘hope’ as his slogan in large text. This stencil style to piece created solid character using the American colours red blue and white to aid Obama in making the people feel unified and on his journey and the countries journey together. His slogan word in this in this famous poster is ‘hope’ previously ‘progress’ which was the original word from the artist. It’s clear, bold, solid and sits in with rest of the piece well. It also highlighted and pushed the American public with the idea of big cultural change. The poster was strongly supported by it’s logo.  The logo shows the American stripes creating the road into the distance representing a bright future ahead quote article ‘in no doubt helped sway many of the undecided voters who needed a clear brand like sense of what Obama stood for’. Much like a commercial brand, the confident use of specific colour, imagery, logo and slogan was used to push Obama to his victory in 2008.  Although simple this piece created a strong aesthetic that the public warmed to.

This is the conservative parties Billboard poster from 1987. The work uses text as its main tool to highlight an opposition party’s policy. This aimed to capture the attention of the public this is a done with imagery of a soldier with no weapons next to the text; ‘which reads Labour’s policy on arms’. This is paired with the conservative logo and slogan at the time.  The piece is black and white throughout, apart from the logo highlighting the party who’s attacking on the opposition. The use of black and white looks to me to be used to enforce the idea that the subject matter is black and white and they don’t have to do much to show you. The use of black-and-white also aids the party as it highlights their logo which is in blue representing their right-wing politics. This technique of showing up the opposition is used to constantly throughout politics, but similarly used every day commercial advertising.

 This is a referendum poster from 1938 from the Nazi campaign.  This propaganda poster shows the unity of hands hailing Hitler with the words ‘greater Germany yes’. The imagery of all the raised hands shows and stresses the idea of Mass movement and their importance this has on the power of the country trying to propel the public opinion. Similar to the previous Obama imagery, the use of simple slogans that are confident such as ‘greater Germany’ again pushes the idea of unity and making the public feel part of something. Like in previous Obama poster the Nazi colours of red black and white have been used throughout reinforcing the Nazi colour scheme. The use of black letter style text which is bold, strong, sharp and clean supports what the propaganda poster and campaign where trying to convey. This simple use of the word ‘yes’ enforces clear power and no room for negotiation.  This links in with the idea that propaganda is enforced through power and mass movement.  Although no use of the Nazi logo here the bold graphics and strong imagery married with the use of colour allows you to glance at the poster and with ease you know what it’s communicating.

In 2014 after being quite well established of 6years in the making, airbnb needed a face lift and rebrand. With the use of a new logo and clean simple font, as well as clear colour pallet they launched the brand. With the help of some creative social media platforms, this is a clear example of how a rebrand can end up pushing a company to lead its industry. 

In the late 1990s, Burberry had no choice but to start considering a rebrand of their whole company due to association with the wrong target market and their brand being linked with gang culture and not being seen as the high end, exclusive products they were creating. With a new global design director in 2001, they used style icons like Kate Moss and Emma Watson to turn their brand around and turn the negative talk into positive.  This clearly shows how endorsing a brand right and pushing for the right target market can turn a brand around.

Target audience research: 

The green party’s logo was one of the key reasons I chose it to rebrand. Straight away I look at the logo and to me it represents some kind of fair trade brand. What it doesn’t do, is say we are strong political party. It feels like a charity organisation to support climate change. Whilst climate change does play a huge role in the party, it also creates a big gap between conveying that that this is a political party with a range of policies. Whilst the party is called the green party, linking to the environment straight away, I feel I will take largely into consideration the use of colour in the logo and will edge away from using green.

As not being a voter for the green party, I am one of their target market which viewed the party as pretty much being based just around the environment. After spending a long time looking at their website, this gave me a much better understanding of the party. I gaged they are very much left wing and stand for people from all walks of life, pushing the idea of democracy and that  policies are developed by ordinary members, not just the leadership, and passed at conference to which every member is invited so you can directly affect the policies by becoming a member. Their key focuses are: Public NHS/ Fair economy/ Decent homes/ Safe climate/ Free education/ Better transport.

I then went on to look at the branding of the main competitors for the green party and how they have branded their party, in order to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. Looking at the other logos should help for direction and inspiration as well as pushing me to create something different and modern for the green party.

The conservative party uses a tree as their logo, promoting the idea of growing into something bigger. The use of an oak tree (the national tree of Britain) works, showing the idea of strength, endurance and longevity. The logo used to be a green wash to show the leaves but since the larger competition of the UKIP party, the conservatives changed it the the union jack.

The Labour party uses a rose as its logo. The rose is the national flower of England and automatically links to our national rugby and football badges. As well as this it’s a symbol that for a long time has been a symbol of socialism. As well as the idea of growth into something beautiful and the link to love.

The liberal democrats adopted their bird logo in 1989, trying the represent the new middle ground party ready to take flight. As well as the concept of the bird representing liberalism.