Still from the film Logorama by H5
We learn to live with the encroachment of branding into daily life; like the weather, we just accept it as part of everyday living. But the more we become inured to the bludgeoning intrusiveness of commercial lapel-grabbing, the more the brand owners — and the designers who work for them — ramp up their efforts to attract our attention.
A world colonized by brands is the theme of a new film by French designers and filmmakers H5. Logorama is a slick 17-minute-long animated movie that appears to lampoon both the Hollywood blockbuster — violent, crude and adrenalized — and the world of branding, a world where logos festoon every surface and where it is customary to be exposed to brand activity at every turn. I say appears to lampoon, because the intention of the filmmakers is unclear.
The film is beautifully made. It is set in a fictive LA, or at least a CGI city that lives up to Reyner Banham’s view of Los Angeles as "Autopia" and the city of the "immediate future." The screen emits a supernatural brightness; colours pop with chromatic intensity; everything is hygienically pure — it’s Die Hard with the product placements taking centre stage — a disaster movie set in Brand Utopia. It's what will happen when brands make movies, as if they don't already.
The movie tells the story of two cops (Michelin men) chasing a gun-toting, child-kidnapping, bad-guy (Ronald MacDonald) through — in the words of the filmmakers — “an over-marketed world built only from logos and real trademarks.” As motion graphics writer Mark Webster has noted, the film contains numerous subtleties and in-jokes: "The Quicktime wall clock; the Energizer street lamps; the 007 guns and homage to Maurice Binder’s barrel shot; KFC getting flattened by the beef jerky store, Slim Jim; and Ronald McDonald being taken out by Weight Watchers." Logorama climaxes in a series of cataclysmic natural disasters engulfing this pixel-built city of a million brands.
But instead of turning us against brand ubiquity, H5 create the suspicion that perhaps they think this logo-dominated, freeway-gridded world is really something to admire. It’s almost as if they relish an homogenised realm of brand ubiquity. Their famous music video for Röyksopp shows a similar fondness for the world of corporate info graphics and PowerPoint pie-chart aesthetics.
So while I struggled to find the message in H5’s film, I couldn’t help being seduced by it. I was struck by how many of the logos on show are rather wonderful — fine examples of the art and craft of graphic design. But this only served to reminded me of the essential conundrum at the heart of being a graphic designer; namely that the job is to create seduction and allure for our clients regardless whether it is a true reflection of reality or not. And — like lawyers defending criminals — we mostly do this with professional detachment. Yet as commentators have been telling us for decades, there are consequences — moral, political and cultural — attached to our desire to create this world of beauty and seduction. One of those consequences might just be a brand-dominated world like the one depicted in Logorama. Scary thought.
Comments [21]
http://vimeo.com/7306427
Looking forward to seeing the whole piece!
01.18.10
10:26
01.18.10
07:21
01.19.10
08:25
Great Post.
Thanks for sharing
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01.19.10
10:52
I don't think there's a clear message as in "this brand is good, this one is bad" but there's a very good storytelling and clever use of the motion.
I don't think this addresses an issue, but rather use a more than common truth to take use to a "fantasy world made of real brand build on fantasy..."
Some more thoughts on my blog: http://www.stratosferik.com/general/logorama-a-true-story
Overall, It's good fun :)
01.19.10
12:22
Isn’t it telling, for example, that the look of the Röyksopp music video was “recycled”, lock, stock and barrel, in an ad they directed for French nuclear giant Areva (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3B__ovj2jU) ?
01.19.10
03:31
http://vimeo.com/3431751
01.19.10
09:17
01.20.10
06:53
http://vimeo.com/3431751
01.21.10
01:10
http://vimeo.com/8873785
01.21.10
01:11
Brands are not just an inescapable aspect of commerce, they are an inescapable aspect of existence. To suggest that brands pervade the world intrusively is to misunderstand how brands relate to people. It is not in the best interests of a brand to assert itself without an objective relevant to the context at hand.
A brand represents the sum total of an identity experience, no matter what the type, scale or complexity of the identity. Some brands are commercial; commercial brands deal in more immediate value and so they tend to trade in direct attention in highly articulated media. This also makes them easy targets for naive skeptics.
If a brand is relevant it's marks will act in such a way as to allow people to intervene in the chosen environment more effectively. Brands that are in touch with their audiences understand that superficial self-promotion is counter-productive. Brand awareness without an associated capacity to intervene serves nothing.
Not only will the actual brandmarks date as the brands featured in Logorama evolve but armed with a few logo-busting insights and a decent grasp of the significance of the role of brands the appeal of the film is destined to be short-lived. There is a significant difference in meaning between the presentation of an abstract logo and engaging the primary mark of a purposeful brand.
Meaningful graphic design is always subject to brand identity. The measure of graphic design's validity lies in it's capacity to enable intervention. It is a gross and widely held misconception that graphic design is responsible for creating desire. Graphic design can only assist in recognising a brand but it is the brand's capacity for intervention that creates desire. Assisting in brand recognition is not the same as creating desire.
Logorama is more about an entertaining relationship of icons, tags and signifiers in an artificially constructed world than it is about brands. There are many media-savvy witticisms in the film to appreciate but it is not an opportunity to build a credible case against marketing brands.
Brands are not an enemy to be guarded against, brands enable people to makes sense of the world through meaningful interventions.
A.
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01.22.10
07:43
Thank you for sharing
Cheers
01.22.10
06:42
We don't come up any hamburgers when we're looking at McDonalds signs. We don't remind of any shapes of bottle from a logo of Coke.
We do see the impression from Logos.
Logos are all about impressions.
We believe that we can get various cheap fast foods from M and we buy cool feeling from Coke.
Yes, I believe that we are basically buying Logos(impression of brands).
In terms of this point, this movie is not telling you the whole story.
We are bringing our impressions of each logo to decorate the story.
01.26.10
04:55
The only people that might find themselves seduced/moved to care are designers with the obvious self-interest that a few of those are probably your babies.
01.27.10
03:11
(some interesting comments above - Ryan: to say the world 'is so gross', maybe be a slight exaggeration. I felt sad arriving at Koh Samui airport last week, only to be greeted by a set of gigantic (and I mean massive) branded billboards. Over-saturated is a little more accurate).
www.madebybig.com
02.02.10
01:18
Without a doubt that is the most lucid account of the role of graphic design I have ever come across.
02.03.10
07:59
Agreed, over-agressive marketeers, that in the constant fight for viewer space, and the attempt to force themselves onto the potential consumer, while creating artificial desires for consumption, are the real problem... Brands are just an attempt to associate that desire with a product form a specific producer.
If there was no attempt at creating these artificial desires, brands themselves would become useless...
This short is just a collection of brands that have successfully been pushed upon the consumer enough times that they are instantly recognisable, without actually conveying any underlying criticism at them.
Didn't see coca-cola though.. whats by some called the nº1 one brand, you'd think it would appear (or at least more prominently!)?
02.10.10
04:41
We are dominated by markting and logos. We are destroying ourlseves with fast food. We call ourselves the United States yet we only offer Free Shipping to 48 States (did you read the getaway car Ronald was driving?). We corrupt our children with violence (the two young logos who saw the guns didn't think -oh no! but - hey, we could sell these). The flash images of in-your-face markting ploys gone astray were abundant.
And as if that wasn't enough... we plunge the earth for oil until we destroy it... leaving only 1 women logo and 1 man logo and an island (what's left of CA)... and as the movie closes we see her pickup the Macintosh apple and have a bite. Adam and Eve anyone???
I was disgusted by the film... but not because I found the film disgusting. It was wonderul created and sends a message if you are willing to hear it. I was disgusted because it was so right on... that someone felt it had to be made. Someone who sees us for what we are and calls us on it.
But we all get to have our 2 cents and I'm sure eveyone who sees the film will have a different reaction.
02.19.10
02:34
03.07.10
09:48
h5 has the best sens of humor ever.
05.10.10
06:27
I was surprised to see the logo characters smoking, I thought it was not politically correct!
06.18.10
01:53