Week 4 - Converse & Visual Codes

Today we looked at a Converse, their latest campaign was quite interesting to look at, it's called 'Sneakers get loud', people made viral videos - example video is below - where people would make a viral video for a chance to win prizes. They also created a place where up and coming bands can go to record and perform music at Converse Rubber Tracks Studio in Brooklyn. Converse would then use that music in their adverts and the bands would gain free promotion and even prizes.
We also looked into a little bit of Converse's history, the shoe began as a basketball sneaker and didn't really become a trendy item until the 1950's when it was the 'birth of the teenager' where teenagers started to be individual instead of wearing what their parents did. Converse became even more successful in the 1970's punk era, they were very much worn as they would last a long time, they weren't too expensive and many people liked the worn look and the fact you could make them your own by drawing on them with permanent markers.
Eventually Nike bought converse, Rob Walker said 'Discovering that Nike had bought Converse was like hearing Elvis Costello had started writing jingles for Microsoft' and with Converse originally wanting to come across as individual there was a bit of controversy.

In our seminar  we discussed visual codes, we started off by being given a bunch of photos in our groups and having to group them up, our groups were; models, fashion icons, brands, interiors & architecture and non-fashion influences.

We then had to pick on of the photos that stood out to us the most, the image of Lily Cole stood out to me most, I think I was mainly drawn to the bold contrast between her ginger hair and the green dress she is wearing. I'm also a big lover of makeup and I loved the look she's wearing in the photography, I'm also a lover of fashion photography and she also looked quite fierce in the image which also made it stand out.

We then had to bring in an image of ourselves wearing an outfit we would normally wear and we had to describe our own style. 

I would describe my own style as relaxed and quite minimal, I don't tend to wear many accessories and if I do they tend to be neutral and not too much of a statement. Currently I really like wearing faux leather which is quite a big trend this A/W.

Then in pairs we had to describe each others style from the images we'd brought in without showing what we thought about our own style. We were also given questions to fill in to get to know each other for example 'What do you love?', 'What music do you like?' and more.

Week 4 - Visual Contrast

In today's lecture we looked at visual contrast, it's contrast as a useful visual approach and can perform various vital functions. 

• attract, delight and seduce - visual power
• inform, underpin and explain - visual communication
• revive, refresh and sustain - visual interest

Some examples of visual contrast include; 

• male V female
• fantasy V reality
• past V present
• abstract V accessible
• lux V grunge
• urban V rural

This image I found on pinterest shows lux V rural

In our seminar, using Photoshop we created played around with some different settings and tools to create different contrasts and style of images. The image below is the work that I did during this seminar.

Week 4 - Marketing Positioning

In our lecture we looked at Marks & Spencer as a case study to do with marketing positioning, in the last 3 years their women's wear sales were in decline so they wanted to reposition as they were failing to differentiate. They repositioned by trying to have exceptional quality and confident style, they want to appeal to cultured, cool and creative women but some say they are still unclear to what consumer demographic they are trying to target.
We then looked into positioning, segmentation and targeting in more detail including the different levels they can take place.

In our seminar in groups of 3 we filled in a table with columns including potential area of differentiation, tactics to achieve this, competitive advantage and value for consumers against the 7 P's for M&S.
Then we created a perceptual map with M&S against other competition, we created ours with quality and service as our factors.

Week 3 - Visual Codes

In this lecture we looked at the visual codes of luxury for 4 brands in different styles.

Heritage
Ancestry, legacy, tradition, lineage, progenitor, provenance
Example brand - Louis Vitton
- damous for luxury travel goods
- classic trunk
- not afraid to modernise

Wit
Playfulness, guile, adroitness, repartee, raillery, badinage
Example brand - Paul Smith
- instantly recognisable
- play with the logo
- modern twist on tailoring
- sense of fun continued in store
- eclectic mix

Purity
Simplicity, classical, artistic, graceful, elegant, immaculacy
Example brand - Calvin Klein
- minimalism
- instantly recognisable
- underwear
- use celebrities
- use a lot of contrast in photos

Sensuality 
Physically, seduction, passion, suggestiveness, indulgence, decadence
Example brand - Dolce & Gabbana
- instantly recognisable
- use celebrities
- lots of imagery in adverts
- recognisable palette of colour

Using visual codes brands create a visual identity.
Type - Headline/display font
Image - Photography/illustration
Colour - Colour palette/on trend/on brand
Icon - Motif/logo
Pattern - Texture/gradients

Continuing on with visual codes in our seminar we were given an image from a fashion related advert, we then had to pick out the key themes and what we could see within the image. 

The key themes we saw within our image were; seductive, animalistic, obsessive, sexual, fixated, dominatrix, feline, gold digger.

In the image we could see; a young woman, daylight, an office, a mans shoe, she had perfect hair and makeup, she was just wearing seductive, black, classy underwear, she had claw like nails.

Week 3 - Exploring Colour Theory

In today's lecture we looked at colour theory, the hue is the original colour, the value is the lightness or darkness of the hue, the chroma is the strength/dominance of the hue from saturation, a tint is the hue with white added and a shade is the hue with black added. We also looked at primary, secondary, tertiary, harmonious, contrasting and complimentary colours, you can see all these in the diagrams below.

In our seminar we created colour palettes using Photoshop, I used an urban artwork image which I found during research for my moodboard about Maharishi. Using the colour picker tool, I picked out the main colours that stood out to me in the image and placed them alongside each other in different orders.

Week 3 - The Visual Critic/Creative Writing Techniques

Our lecture was quite interesting today, started off my watching a clip from Ice Age which related to obsession, I thought it was a pretty good example! To obsess means to be continually preoccupied.
The lecture also involved a bit of psychology about visual awareness which was something I hadn't really looked at before.
Then they went on about how to become a visual critic and I noted down the points they mentioned which include;

• use your voice
• have an opinion
• have a view or make a judgement
• comment on the quality or worth
• this can be based on ideas, experience, intuition, knowledge, enthusiasms.
• share your ideas
• discuss & debate
• choose a topic - participate
• look - switched on
• receptive - receive something
• receptor
• record - always carry a camera/notebook
• read - know your subject
• Routine - make it habitual

Later on in our seminar we did some creative writing techniques, I was a little nervous about this at first as in the past I haven't been the best at writing, however once the task was over I felt much more confident and I think that is also due to having my own blog for the past year which has given me the chance to improve my writing. 

Our first task was to write about 'Who I am?' and we had 2 minutes to write. As you can see I had a rather odd ending!

Then we had to write about 'The Death of the High Street.' and 'The Death of Print.', for these two pieces we had 3 minutes to write.

 
Then we were asked to look at an article from a magazine we brought in, I chose the article called 'Trolls are so last season' in Company. From the article we had to pick out the tone of voice, style of writing and core demographic that the article was aimed at.

Then in a group of 3, between us we had to pick one magazine and write another 3 minute piece about either 'The Death of the High Street.' or 'The Death of Print.' and write it in the style of the chosen magazine. I chose to write about 'The Death of the High Street.'