Week 8: Design and Commerce

Okay. Over the last seven weeks, we’ve been talking about social design, humanitarian design, design-as-art, and design for community. Hopefully these discussions have broadened your understanding of the power and permeating nature of design, and more specifically, graphic design.

Now we come around to the commercial stuff. The flashy stuff. The familiar stuff, the things we typically associate with graphic design. Commercial studio environments. Advertisements. Print ads. Superbowl spots. Persuasive campaigns. Advertising, art, graphic design, popular media and all other kinds of visual communication are all interrelated components of visual culture. It could easily be argued that (in America, at least), advertising is the dominant element of visual culture. Most of the communicative content we see on a daily basis is trying to sell us something. 

Think back to week one, where we looked all around us to identify different types of design. Design isn’t just IN the environment, it IS the environment. What kinds of commercial messages do you see when you look around? Next time you leave the house, try to count how many commercial messages you see around you. Odds are, you’ll lose count pretty quickly.

This is a big topic. We’re only going to graze the surface, but we’re going straight to the source. On Thursday, we’ll take a field trip to the Portland offices of Wieden+Kennedy, arguably one of the best advertising agencies in the world. (A popularly held opinion.)

In preparation for our visit, familiarize yourself with their work. If you’ve picked up a magazine, seen cable television, visited New York or San Francisco, or watched anything on Hulu in the last few years, there’s a good chance you’ve seen their work. I’ll be posting up things for you to look at and think about in preparation for class this week. Come with questions. We see this stuff all the time, now let’s think about it.