Thoughts about advertising, our daily lives, and the information that is imparted upon us whether or not we choose. Why is it okay that we all know so many logos, why is it necessary, why do we not know much about our natural environment? Think of other questions and talk about them. Remember Matt Siber and his The Untitled Project - look at the North America and Europe versions of this project on his website. Think about the implications of all this imagery and your daily life. Look around you this weekend and think about all the information you see and why you should/have to know everything you are told via print, video, radio, and the web.
Brijit Spencer
ReplyDeleteADP III James Rotz
Advertisements have become this subconscious presence in our lives. If you think about it, our cities would look so empty without ads, our streets would be bland without billboards, and our magazines would definitely be lacking about 70% of their contents. Or perhaps our lives would just be less cluttered. Nevertheless, advertisements have become not only expected in our daily lives, but literally absorbed into our subconscious. The majority of the time (unless I stop to think about it) I do not even realize I am reading an ad or singing along to a commercial. It’s ridiculous, the number of slogans and jingles we know by heart. What’s also ridiculous is that we have absolutely no control over this. We are forced to see and hear whatever advertising is thrown our way, whether we want to or not. Unless we completely cut ourselves off from society and become a hermit, we have to deal with advertising in our everyday lives. As annoying as it may sometimes become, it is a necessity of consumer-based society. It is acceptable for us to know so many logos because that is how we live. We are no longer hunter-gatherers. There is no need for us to know what berries are okay to eat, what the names of weeds are, or much about our environment at all because our lives no longer depend on it. Presently, in this society, we thrive on the consumption of man-made goods. We need to know which products are available and reliable, not what kind of tree is growing where. We don’t care where our food is grown or where our water comes from, because that is taken care of for us. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be informed. I hate that I am so unaware of my environment and I feel it is important for us to both appreciate our resources and understand the impact of our actions on this earth.
Matt Siber’s “Untitled Project” really demonstrates how much our society depends on the written advertisement, or advertising in general.
“The absence of the printed word not only draws attention to the role text plays in the modern landscape but also simultaneously emphasizes alternative forms of communication such as symbols, colors, architecture and corporate branding. In doing this, it serves to point out the growing number of ways in which public voices communicate without using traditional forms of written language” (Siber).
All of this text and symbolism is simultaneously thrown at us in large doses everyday. It takes over our daily lives so much that we aren’t even phased by it anymore. Not until Siber removes the text from his images do I realize how much space it actually occupies in modern cities and how much we rely on written word and advertising to be informed. Advertisers know exactly how to target us via the mediums we so often utilize and the sources that are both unavoidable and necessary in our lives.
Trisha Previte
ReplyDeleteADP III: James Rotz
Without doubt advertising is an influence on our day-to-day lives, to the point where it has become an irrefutable fact. Living in a capitalist nation such as ours, all we have to do is open up our kitchen cupboard to find a plethora of slogans and logos just waiting to pounce on our brains. However, most people are not even aware of what extent advertising affects us on a regular basis. Modern society has become so subconsciously accustomed to all of the advertising that not even the obnoxious billboards or loud commercials shouting in our faces turn our heads. By removing the text of various urban scenes in The Untitled Project, Matt Siber turns heads with the absence of this constant messaging. The irony is compelling; I especially loved the North American piece involving the Ford racecar, in which Siber removes the text “If you haven’t looked at Ford lately, look again.” In this entire project, Siber is forcing his audience to look again, without even needing to lay those words out there. Another aspect I found interesting was how the lack of text affected each individual image. In some of the photographs I definitely noticed a strong sense of calm emanating from the lack of written word. However, even more remarkable was how in others, the chaos of the visual imagery could not be calmed even through lack of text. There is just too much color and shape and form that even the absence of word becomes irrelevant, and this overload of information is something to which we are constantly exposed. Is this a cause for concern? Should we be forced to succumb to commercial chaos as we are? What about our other surroundings – our natural surroundings - do these even matter anymore? I think when most people finally recognize that they can name many more logos than they can species of plants, they are automatically overcome with a feeling of guilt. But really, in our present society, is it even necessary to know plant names? In all actuality, it isn’t. Our survival no longer depends on differentiating between poisonous and benign berries. Most of us are not going to be lost in the woods scrounging for food from the earth in our lifetimes. If we’re looking for food, we’re going to be looking upward for golden arches, not downward for nuts and berries. We hunt for catchy logos and pretty packaging, but not much else. Maybe this means knowing logos has become more important, especially on an everyday level. However, we have to remember that in other areas of the world, this is not the case. In other areas of the world, knowing the look of a certain healing plant can mean the difference between life and death.
As residents of this planet, we shape the nature of our environment just as much as our advertising has been shaping us. If we remain ignorant of what lies beyond our billboards, we cannot possibly understand how we are impinging on the world around us for future or even current generations. Those forests we are mining could be depleting other important resources for other residents of that area, whether they are human or animal, that have just as much, if not more of a right to be there. That being said, I hope to educate myself in order to better understand and hopefully change my impact on the world. Others may not feel the same desire, but really, have they ever had any immediate need to?
Anita Sidler
ReplyDeleteADP 3 with James Rotz
September 21, 2009
Response 2: Advertisements
I find Matt Siber’s work to make me think about the daily amount of advertisements surrounding us. I think of Times Square, there are MILLIONS of advertisement- in fact, its pretty much one big crazy advertisement. It’s so overwhelming; that I start not seeing any of the advertisements- it backfires. (If I try to focus of the ads, I most likely will get hit by a cab for not looking ahead of me.) Even in Ann Arbor, there are still tons of advertisements, I don’t notice them as much because coming from New York, this is nothing. I feel, like many, sad that we do not advertise what’s most important- nature. Though, on the animal planet I believe there is a show early in the morning of an hour or so of a sunrise somewhere in the world- no one talking, just you and nature. I feel like advertisements have a bad reputation now, at least for me. I look at them, and automatically consider them as something evil, because it has money and it’s trying to sell you junk you really don’t need.
I think that human beings constantly use the reason of language to differ ourselves from other mammals. We feel great when we can read everything on a building or billboard just like we did when we were in 1st grade and learning how to read. We’ve depended on words to make advertisements, essays, and scholarly things. We have forgotten the simple imagery, as we as artist return to. I think Siber’s work illustrates that, separately text from image. Pretty interesting.
Whether most of us notice, both subconscious and conscious advertising affect our decisions on a daily basis. Even in a declining economy, new advertisement continues circulating through almost every medium. With the increasing plethora of advertisements, firms and business analysts are forced to conceive innovative locations and media in order to catch the consumer’s eye. Companies display logos on just about every surface of their product.
ReplyDeleteWhen asked to identify ten indigenous plants of Michigan, I struggle. Ask me the same question eight years prior, when I was a boy scout, and I would name fifteen. As the years progress, I found that my values changed drastically and those environmental essentials I learned as a child nearly vanished.
When considering our demographic, seventy percent of the world’s population resides in a city. Only a very miniscule fraction continues to live in what we would define as “nature.” In a nutshell, our immediate surroundings define who we are. We are currently surrounded by words and images that serve to intrigue us.
If you look at most advertisements, they are intended to 1) catch the consumer’s eye 2) imprint a catchy visual or slogan 3) and convince that person to pay attention to the product. This is something nature has a hard time over-powering. Unless people see broad signs on trees and shrubbery that compete in size and quantity with most modern advertisements, we are bound to incorporate that wildlife as an insignificant part of the background.
Also, asking somebody to take time out of their day to reflect on the natural wildlife surrounding them is asking them to do a voluntary act with little short term reward. Even though the long-term effects overshadow any brief inconveniences, our society thrives on excuses and easy solutions. Until, the issue of global warming or the lack of fossil fuel directly impacts someone, they are likely to ignore the issue all together. When we are faced with such a problem, people look for the easiest possible solution with the smallest strain on their daily lives. The only way to fix many of our global concerns is for our society to act proactively and work on a long-term solution.
The human mind is constantly being manipulated to suit the needs of the species. Not too long ago, humans could recite the Illiad or Hamlet by heart, and today most people have trouble remembering where they put their keys. We place so much of our memory into technology, we type our schedules into Blackberries, keep track of phone numbers in contact lists, and our lives seem like they’re over if our computer crashes. So with all this technology at our fingertips we use our memory for short term and more immediate things. Long gone are the days when it was useful to quote Byron, and we have welcomed the ability to remember which store is having a sale on Saturday or what new burrito Taco Bell just introduced.
ReplyDeleteHow many times has someone said to you in the past year “it’s so easy a caveman could do it” and you didn’t think of the GEICO commercial? This morning I had an idea for a project in the shower and instead of thinking I was super smart, I thought of the Holiday Inn commercial (“No ma’am I’m not a doctor- but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night”). These ads and slogans help connect us and relate to each other in the way that memorizing the Illiad may have two hundred years ago.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we are just adapting to our new manufactured environment and in a sense evolving. This only becomes dangerous when we forget that we still have a responsibility for the world we live in, we don’t live on malls and restaurants (even if we might think so) and we have to protect it.
Firstly I want to say that I found the costume of the baby comical but the fact that someone would dress his or her baby as McDonalds French fires kind of terrifies me.
ReplyDeleteI find advertising to be the most powerful imagery out there today. It takes something totally irrelevant and makes it relevant. If your product is not advertised chances are no one knows about it. Advertising can make the difference between two identical products. How often do we buy things based on the brand that is printed on it? If that brand wasn’t associated with that product, would we still buy it? For example a Nike hat costs ten times more then just normal cap. Advertising firstly makes a product known but then it also creates a kind of persona that people can relate back to that brand. We are a people who often define our selves by brands because we want that persona that was created in the advertising.
Is it okay for us to define our selves this way? I think it is natural to want to define your self and using brands has become an easy way of doing that. I even think that branding in way is normal. Like how many of us have Michigan t-shirts, even that in a way is branding. However, I think most commercial branding creates a false sense of identity because the persona created by the brands is often just made up by a bunch of marketers. These personas’ then don't really reflect what the brand or company truly stands for. So in that sense I think defining your self by a commercial brand is not a true reflection of you. I think it would be better to define your self though just a personal style. Yet, I know that this is easier said then done.
Andrew Hainen
ReplyDeleteADP III :: James Rotz
Weekly Statement :: Tuesday September 22nd, 2009
The idea that we “need” to know about what is advertised to us seems kind of loaded. It’s not that we need to know those things, it’s that we just do. We need to actually look at “how” we know those things, not why. Where have we learned them and how did we learn them? Companies don’t care about the why factor, they want to know “how” to get us to know about their product.
The simplicity of it is that companies shove these things in our face and down our throat. Sure, trees and plants are all there, but they act more as a backdrop to our everyday lives, their purpose is not to stand out; if anything, they’re meant to blend in. Advertisements on the other hand are brightly colored, pasted on things we actually use commonly and target our wants, not our necessities. A logo’s design is so that it is remembered, that is it’s sole purpose.
After reading the Sand County Almanac, one of my classmates made a good point. He went through and described the outdoor life as detailed and fleshed out as possible to really make us look deeply at it and not just be around it, but to actually be aware. At the end of the day though, he was still observing things from a utilitarian point of view for the most part. He was mentioning how he could use certain things from nature, like on starting on page 11, he lists off what years they cut timber and used it. The point is, he was in the mindset (like the rest of us) that nature needs to be known about so that we can use it, not just known for the sake of knowing. All in all, though, I’ll say it again: that book was about as entertaining as a brick.
With advertising though, it is utilitarian, and its designed that way. Every part of it is there so that we can milk it and try and take something from it. Nature is not designed that way. We are human beings, our nature is to cultivate and use things, not to be passive.
Marian Perez
ReplyDelete9/22/09
The quickest way of getting an idea or point across is visually, thus why advertisements are so impacting and common. I think that advertisements in our daily lives do tend to over whelm us with products. It is ok that we all know more abut logos because their job is to be recognizable and popular to viewers, when plants do not have that purpose. I personally love logos and want to go into graphic design, but I can also see how people relate more personally to an advertisement that depicts a situation they can relate to or desire than to a common plant. Plants are not as eye catching as logos, they are everyday things that don’t flash at us.
The popularity of products, food, and services depicted in ads are more popular than plants and better known by seeming to be more useful in everyday life. For example, a cool ad for an iPod has more recognition and fulfillment because we can use it everyday to play the music we love. We don’t touch or use a plant everyday, so we tend to forget the usefulness they provide in our environment. I do think plants go unappreciated in today’s society, but not surprised as to why. Our lives are hectic and people around the world have bigger problems to worry about. Advertisements do a good job of fitting into our hectic lives by communicating fast and catching our eye, things a plant lacks.
It is necessary for us to be able to recognize logos and ads because they are things that are around us everyday and can help us if we need it. If we need a quick car service or food delivery, advertisements have helped by making the connection to a service quick and easy. It is good to know you surroundings and resources, along with them plants should be included but logos tend to dominate the attention away form them. Recognizing a product is used on day-to-day bases to make our lives easier, and plants are not looked in that way. It is ironic how our survival being strongly dependant on plants can go unnoticed and a service or product that helps us out short term is more important and noticed.
Matt Siber’s work is a good example of how people are more familiar with logos than our natural environment. It goes to show the drastic level advertisements have reached by becoming a norm in our natural environment. The signs used in his photos are much more than signs; they are an identity many people are familiar with as if they were a celebrity. There is a sort of awe the logos in the works have that is similar to the awe in photographs of flowers, an aesthetic awe in the common things we see in our world being looked at in depth.
All the advertising imagery has added to our concept of what is common in the world of today; plants no longer are on the top of the list. We must not forget plants and let other tings outshine their importance. Just because plants don’t have bright-light arrows pointing at them does not mean they are not there to help make this world a better place.
Mica M
ReplyDeleteI feel that we know what many "Think" we should know. That Nature and our Enviornment is no longer the top priority. That games, and cells phones and other technology is what is in demand, not what is happening with our trees and plants. Showing everything to us comes to us quicker, therefore it is shown through advertizements and video, and even music. Just because no one is advertizing plants and their importance, doesn't mean we need to forget there are not there.
As Americans our world is crowded with advertisements, both blatant and subtle, from the moment we are born. Currently, I am wearing a T-shirt with the word “Adidas” printed on the front in a bold, clear, san serif font. Earlier this morning I threw on this shirt without any thought or consideration for the fact that I would be a walking advertisement for the remainder or the day whether I liked it or not. Advertising has grown to be such a normal part of American culture that it almost escapes my level of consciousness and it would be ignorant to claim that it doesn’t have a powerful and profound effect on my life. What began as a marketing technique to help companies promote their products to the public has now become a constant stimulant for our consumer culture. The point of advertising is to entice the viewer to purchase a product or service and the idea that agencies play to our faults and shortcomings, as a means to do so is disconcerting. For example, nearly every ad in a typical teen magazine contains a smiling, beautiful, thin, heavily made up woman. If she could speak she would say, “If you buy this, you can can be skinny, pretty and happy too! Because with it, you’re just average.” Companies spend thousands of dollars trying to convince us that our lives will improve if we buy what they are selling.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, many aspects of advertising are directly related to art and design. Each ad in any magazine or newspaper has been carefully planned and executed by a trained designer and are both creative and visually appealing. When a designer has failed to market a product successfully, it is obvious. In the respect, advertising is a challenge for the artist to market the product in the most imaginative and innovative way possible.
I think Matt Siber’s work draws attention to a very relevant issue, in an intelligent and intriguing manner. His art makes me think. It calls for me to imagine a world without the incessant pressure of brand names and allows us to see the ads as works of art. His message is clear, but not intrusive or overwhelming, as some social commentary artwork can tend to be.
Amber Harrison
ReplyDeleteADP III
Response II
Advertising is part of all of our daily lives, and working at a job in a marketing department I am sucked even deeper into consumerism and eye popping colors. It is all part of survival to notice images that reoccur in our lives. While that of golden arches may not be all that important, it is simply nature that dictates we recognize the home of the “super sized.” Advertisements provide us with logos. From a logo we have access to knowledge and to the resources that the logo imposes. In a few split seconds of recognition we are able to locate vital information, helping us with our daily decisions.
Matt Siber in his Untitled Project seems to help along the idea of bombardment. By placing the text outside of the images, the world begins to feel bare, almost in a natural state of that which is man made. While the images without text are appealing and still very filling, the photos provoke a thought of where the rest of the world may be. He makes you begin to question where you are without language being presented. When you approach marketing in this way you begin to realize how important logos are. Even after your carefully crafted words to draw the consumer in our gone, you have are your shapes, your colors, and your images.
It is necessary to take in as much as one can to live in this world. We as a culture rely on logos and other marketing techniques, like the power of color to move around in this world. We have a system set in place for direction using a common white outlined, green street sign to direct our next move. With our advancements in technology we are now able to transport images that allow us to know more, and experience entertainment. When we don’t have access to visuals, the radio helps transmit pop culture right along side Beethoven. It is an information age we live in, with all the things just listed you may find on the web. The list conversion to the web is as follows: Google maps for direction, YouTube for video, and Pandora for music. We should know these things, because they help us survive. Our culture has begun to demand a high-tech world, one of education of the world around us, and one where my 85yr old Grandfather has a cell phone.
It’s not okay that we know so many logos. I think in our culture today it’s inevitable that we know so many logos. Every day, we’re inundated with logos and advertisements weather we want to be or not. Even if you choose not to be subject to ads on TV or the Internet, you still see logos on clothing, food, mail, billboards, signs… it is inescapable. When looking at Matt Siber’s project, I was surprised on how it affected me. Although I’m accustomed to seeing signs and colors every day I felt almost uncomfortable without the text there. I especially thought it was interesting when looking at the untitled project in America with the labeling of beauty products. I never realized how much I assess what I buy based on presentation of the products. Without the names on the bottles nothing stood out to me, there was nothing that I would have looked twice at. And that’s what it’s about. There are companies paying millions of dollars to get people to look twice at their project, like the ford advertisement in the untitled project saying, “if you haven’t looked at Ford lately, look again!” Not only is visual pollution, but also it is also mind pollution. Companies want their products to be present in your mind each and every day, ingrained without our consent. It’s also degrading to our culture. It’s so surprising that there are some people who cannot name all the 43 presidents of the United States but they can name what’s on a whopper. At the same time it makes sense because we as a culture have been listening and viewing the same advertisements since we’ve been born.
ReplyDeleteDana Pierfelice
ReplyDeleteADP 3-James Rotz
Response 2
While filling out the survey presented in the initial class session I found it hard to get past a certain question. It was asking me to name ten plants found in your native ecosystem. I could not even think of any plants that were not related to food somehow, whether they were edible or just shared a name with something that was. I realized that sometime when I was learning these plants I had branded them. I had done something to nature that was normally done to consumer products.
I would not ever say it was okay to know what we know about logos versus nature but in this day and age it is accepted. That is because no matter how much nature you are around you still have to work an amount for your knowledge about it. Advertising is a matter of convenience, where nature is a thing of passion. Advertising can be brought to the masses in their bus routes, places of works and homes. Nature has to be sought out, and while this is more fulfilling, many are no longer willing to do this.
Matt Siber’s photos makes you work for your advertising. To get the same information you see on the streets everyday you have to look at the piece and try to mash up the text and logos. The work you’re doing with his photos is comparable to the work you’d be doing if you went out into the woods. You’re studying relationships and aesthetics. Yet, looking at his photos is nowhere near as fulfilling for me as going out into nature is. His photos even devoid of text hold a type of chaos. Nature is inherently calming, so I’ll stick with it.
Shelby Roback
ReplyDeleteADP III
The first thing I noticed in this week’s post was the picture of the baby wearing the McDonald’s get up. Advertising is something we are exposed to since birth, and is something that cannot be avoided. Wherever there is space that can be seen, someone will think to put an advertisement there. Capitalism is supposed to be about healthy competition to create the best product that people want to buy. This is no longer the case. Capitalism is now defined by who is the best advertiser. As Matt Siber points out in his work, advertisements are all around us 24/7, constantly bombarding us with information specifically designed to appeal to our urges. In order to get away from the ever-looming evidence of our consumerist society, we must remove ourselves from places that people frequent.
Advertisements completely saturate everything we do. They are on every Internet website, on buildings, on TV, in magazines, and even on billboards that line the roads as we try to escape from it all. It has reached a point where most people just filter it out as if it where some kind of white noise. This has forced advertisers to go to greater extremes to get people’s attention, creating more outrageous ads and larger billboards that define our landscape and are beginning to define who we are as individuals. The creation of “Brand Names” is just another way to make people pay more for the same products so that they aren’t ridiculed. This kind of advertising is not only the most popular and effective, but also the most meaningless.
Matthew Acomb
ReplyDeleteSeptember 29th
ADP 3, James Rotz
People tend to respond well to advertisements probably for the same reason they have historically responded well to religion. They both satisfy a need for stability and direction in our lives. They tell us that as long as that we do this, we are on the right track and over the last fifty years or so, our culture has gradually started to turn to advertizing and the media to tell us what our priorities should be.
When a person looks at an advertisement, they are presented with a problem and offered a solution. It shows us how much better our lives could be in ways we probably hadn’t considered before we saw the ad. We buy into their solution in an effort to achieve a better life. Advertising and the media have created an ideal of the perfect life that we strive for. When we see an ad for something we already own, we feel good because it tells us that we are on the right track. The reason some ads are more effective than others is because they convince us that we could be living better lives. Because the majority of us would not be content with our lives if they were merely adequate, we do what the ad says.
Because we are constantly being bombarded with new problems and solutions, our standard of living gets to the point where we will never achieve the ideal they have presented to us and as a result, will never be truly happy with the lives we have.