Defining the Brief

1. Research question 

To what extent does Packaging enhance Brand Identity and Consumer Desire - aesthetics, society, culture, colour theory, psychology.

1a. Is it Viable
What is there to study (ontology)?
Packaging design, brands, trends.

How can we know about it (epistemology)?
Using research to back up the argument.

How do we study it (methodology)?
Research in books, research into packaging designs.

2. Defining the design problem
How packaging affects the way that the consumers view products through packaging design. To show products are the same but are packaged differently but are advertised to promote different benefits.

3. "Client"needs or requirements
Create different packaging for similar but the same products so that they have various options.

4. Audience
The audience will be consumers of all ages and genders.

5. Mandatory requirements
Create different packaging that would allure to the public but using similar products to produce multiple different options.

Theory and Practice

Postmodernism is a late 20s-century style of the arts which represents the departure of modernism and earlier styles and conventions.

What Jameson defines as Postmodernism

• Random cannibalisation - not being able to create new styles but picking out things from other styles to make something new
• Over-stimlation - confusion
• Desperate attempt to make sense of the age - no grand narrative
• Recycled culture/reusing cultures that have long since gone - recycling dead styles
• Resignation
• Dystopia
• Depthlessness
• Technology replaces human productivity and skill
• Weakening of historicity

Quotes from Pastiche by Jameson

• 'The increasing unavailability of personal style, engender the well-high universal practise today of what may be called pastiche' pg. 16
• 'The norm itself is eclipsed: reduced to a neutral and reified media speech' pg. 17
• 'Parody finds itself without a vocation; it has lived, and that strange new thing pastiche slowly comes to take it's place' pg. 17
• 'A neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of any laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs' pg. 17
• 'Lends the text an extraordinary sense of deja vu and a peculiar familiarity one is tempted to associate with Freud's "return of the repressed"' pg. 24

Parody (Hutcheon)

• Postmodernism is the 'process of its own production and reception, as well as in its own parodic relation to the art of the past' pg. 179
• 'Its art forms (and theory) use and abuse, install and then subvert conventions in parodic ways, self-conciously pointing both to their own inherent paradoxes and provisionality and, of course, to their critical or ironic re-reading of the art of the past' pg. 180
• 'Postmodern art offers a new model for mapping the borderline between art and the world, a model that works in position within both and yet within neither, a model that is profoundly implicated in, yet  still capable of criticizing, that which it seeks to describe' pg. 180
• 'The paradox of postmodernist parody is that it is not essentially depthless, trivial kitsch, as Eagleton and Jameson both believe' pg. 182
• 'The pluralist, provisional, contradictory nature of the postmodern enterprise challenges not just aesthetics unities, but also homogenizing social notions of the monolithic (male, Anglo, white, Western) in our culture' pg. 183-184

Examples
- Pastiche - Andy Warhol
- Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen
- Supreme logo

Triangulation Exercise

Laura Mulvey is a feminist and a British Film Theorist. After working at the British Film Institute for a number of years, she became a Professor of Film and lectures at the University of London. In her book called ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Mulvey talks about how women are always shown in films to look like sexual objects and ‘Connote to-be-looked-at-ness’ (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19). The idea that women are purely there for the male gaze and for their pleasure is so that male spectator identify themselves with the powerful male character of the film and fantasise about them being in the position of the man with the beautiful looking woman (scopophilia). ‘The spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his lie, his screen surrogate (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:21). Richard Dyer, the writer of ‘Stars’ is also a Professor of Film Studies at the King’s College London and studied at the University of St. Andrews. He mainly specialises in Italian Cinema and LGBTQ Cinema. He agrees with Mulvey’s idea of that women are seen to be in the film for the appeal and voyeuristic gaze of male spectators. 'The fetishisation of the female body has the potential for producing the alternative pleasure of a masochistic relationship between male moviegoer and female star' (Dyer 1979: 189). He also agrees with the idea of the male spectator putting himself in the position of the powerful male character with the female star. However, John Storey, a Professor of Cultural studies at the Centre of Research in Media and Cultural Studies and The University of Sunderland. He disagrees with the points that Mulvey has argued as he thinks that women are not looked at as sexual objects but are admired for their beauty instead. He also says that the two forms of visual pleasure that Mulvey argues are contradictory to one another as he had said 'Two contradictory forms of visual pleasure. The first invites scopophilia; the second promotes narcissism' (Storey 2006: 82). He is arguing that film makers purposely choose actors that look good in order for the spectators to criticise and compare themselves to the actors on screen.

John Storey - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

Harvard referencing
Storey, J (2006). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Georgia: University of Georgia Press. 81-83.

3 contextual facts about Storey

• Professor of Cultural Studies at the Centre of Research in Media and Cultural Studies and The University of Sunderland
• He is also on the editorial/advisory boards of journals in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, the UK, and USA.
• He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna, the University of Henan and the University of Wuhan.

3 key points about the narrative

• Identifying with someone in the movie can be comparable to a child's ego. - The Mirror Phase
• The two forms of visual pleasure are contradictory
• Women are not looked at as sexual objects but rather for their beauty

3 key quotes

• 'Just as a child recognizes and misrecognises itself in the mirror, the spectator recognizes and misrecognizes itself on the screen... His recognition of himself is joyous in that he imagines his mirror image to be more complete, more perfect than he experiences in his own body' (Storey 2006: 82)
• 'Two contradictory forms of visual pleasure. The first invites scopophilia; the second promotes narcissism' (Storey 2006: 82)
• 'Fantasy is not the same as illusion; rather fantasy organizes how we see and understand reality' (Storey 2006: 83)

Richard Dyer - Stars

Harvard referencing 
Dyer, R. (1979) Stars. London: Educational Advisory Service, British Film Institute.

3 contextual facts about Dyer

• Professor of Film Studies at the King's College London
• Specialises in Italian Cinema
• Studied at the University of St. Andrews

3 key points about the narrative

• Stars are people that the public look up/inspire to be
• Men do not appear as erotic objects like women - they want to divert their attention to their masculinity instead
• The female body creates a masochistic pleasure to the male audience

3 key quotes

• 'By reading the images of stars as meaningful or significant, it is implied that there is a someone for whom the star is meaningful or significant' (Dyer 1979: 187)
• 'Stars construct the fantasies and pleasure or moviegoers' (Dyer 1979: 187)
• 'The fetishisation of the female body has the potential for producing the alternative pleasure of a masochistic relationship between male moviegoer and female star' (Dyer 1979: 189)

Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Harvard referencing
Mulvey. L (2009 [1975]) 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' in 'Visual and Other Pleasures', Basingstoke, Palgrave.

Contextual facts about Mulvey

• She is a Feminist.
• She is a British film theorist.
• She studied History at Oxford University.
• She is a professor of Film and Media at the University of London.
• She worked at the British Film Institute for a number of years.
• Avant-garde cinema maker.

Key points about the narrative

• She talks about how women are purely there for the male gaze so that it is pleasing to the man for the woman to look pretty. Scopophilia - the love of looking.
• Women are nothing other than a sexual object in the film industry.
• The Film industry is dominated by males therefore they like to have women sexualised for their advantage.
• Males identify themselves with the main powerful male character of the film.
• Men do not like to be sexually objectified.

5 key quotes

• 'Woman displayed as sexual objects is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to strip-tease' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19)
• 'Connote to-be-looked-at-ness' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19)
• 'Male figure cannot bear the burden of male objectification' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:20)
• 'The man controls the film fantasy and also emerges as the representative of power' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:20)
• ' The spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:21)