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Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

wired.co.uk

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Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#141

Post by eplanit »

vehemenz wrote: post #116
knolax wrote: post #101

> multi cultural inclusive visual banality > It lets companies look diverse > Not sure what skin color to use? Make them blue Seeing cartoon SVGs of brown people really hits a nerve for some people. IMO if you walk around the Bay Area the racial distribution is more or less the same as these graphics, so there's really nothing to complain about in that regard. Go buy Russian software if you don't like it.

It’s a valid observation. Don’t you think it’s a bit cynical and calculated to include “diversity” on every single advertising graphic?

It's similar to the past 2-3 years in television advertisements, where it's also tiresome how one single idea gets copied and copied and copied by every other advertiser. In particular, in the spirit of "inclusiveness", and further driven by BLM, black people are now the default people shown in practically every ad. If aliens were to evaluate the earth based on TV ads, they'd conclude that the USA is about 60% black. Even State Farm insurance has replaced the white Jake character with a new black one (why did Jake have to be replaced? why not simply add a character?). It has become absurd.

Not to knock the motivation, but I am knocking the sheep-like following of one advertiser after the others. For ostensibly creative people, they seem to have very few original ideas among them.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#142

Post by vehemenz »

knolax wrote: post #123
vehemenz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a valid observation. Don’t you think it’s a bit cynical and calculated to include “diversity” on every single advertising graphic?

Only if you think that "diversity" is somehow abnormal. Why is it a calculated move for companies like Google, whose CEO has brown skin, to have some of their advertisements include brown skinned people? The real cynical move would be to make them all white to appease middle America. Why do you feel the rest of us have to hide our existence to appease you?

I too use my identity as a cudgel, except I am a philosopher.

> Only if you think that "diversity" is somehow abnormal.

I don't, and you chose the value-laden term "abnormal" instead of "demographically atypical". Convenient that you chose the term that I would never use and that makes your argument look less preposterous.

> Why is it a calculated move for companies like Google, whose CEO has brown skin, to have some of their advertisements include brown skinned people?

This implies that brown skin is an indicator of diversity. To use your method of reductio: ...only if you think that diversity is determined by superficial attributes like skin color.

> The real cynical move would be to make them all white to appease middle America.

You one-percenters in the Bay Area must be very insulated; appealing to "diversity" does appease middle America. You could never get away with all white characters now, and I'm sure you know that.

> Why do you feel the rest of us have to hide our existence to appease you?

False attribution.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#143

Post by vmception »

knolax wrote: post #93
vmception wrote: post #88

> When you see the CEO of tech companies talk in private or to one another, the way that they frame their view of the world is fascinatingly opposed to the world depicted in a Corporate Memphis illustration I see a CEO who won’t squirrel away over details that are irrelevant to making money, isn't married to a company as their baby, and has in particular let go of the design process and given it to designers or desig…

Products made by people who take no pride in the product are rarely good. It's the difference between enterprise slime and the software that you actually use on your personal computer. Most software really doesn't exist in a competitive market, it's naturally monopolistic, so you can't just rely on market forces to ensure it isn't shit.

And the counterpoint is that Instagram is great. A dozen people got the $1bn buyout, a few years of Facebook vesting and moved on.

The general distribution of all products suck. Has nothing to do with the speculators that consider their $0 par value shares to be part of their portfolio.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#144

Post by vehemenz »

eplanit wrote: post #141
vehemenz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a valid observation. Don’t you think it’s a bit cynical and calculated to include “diversity” on every single advertising graphic?

It's similar to the past 2-3 years in television advertisements, where it's also tiresome how one single idea gets copied and copied and copied by every other advertiser. In particular, in the spirit of "inclusiveness", and further driven by BLM, black people are now the default people shown in practically every ad. If aliens were to evaluate the earth based on TV ads, they'd conclude that the USA is about 60% black.…

I would argue it started around 2013 or 2014, but we've seen more or less the same thing. I haven't watched TV in a few years, so maybe it's gotten worse.

One thing I always thought was interesting; Apple commercials, which go out of their way to feature many types of racial minorities, do not show any:

- obese people

- weirdly proportioned people

- ugly people

- poor people

- person over 45

- meatheads

- Republican-looking people

- disabilities besides deaf, blind, and mobility, e.g. burn victims

They are into advertising to the groups that will be the best-received for their bottom line. It's no more than that, and it's foolish to think otherwise.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#145

Post by kgin »

>Rudnick says that what makes Corporate Memphis particularly insidious is that its worldview is designed to be misleading. “It depicts a world whose problems are already solved, built out of complementary components”

I'm not defending the style but this really seems like a stretch too far.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#146

Post by sidpatil »

Lammy wrote: post #66
sidpatil wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Check out its flat "10-foot UI" from 1999 That doesn't look flat whatsoever. There are plenty of three-dimensional layout elements in that UI.

Are you currently ten feet away from a fuzzy 24” consumer CRT television?

Not at the moment, but the design elements are similar enough to the ones I'd see on my satellite receiver OSD menus from back in the early 2000s. I could tell that those were 3D as well at the time, and my TV at the time was a fuzzy 36" CRT from the 1990s.

And I'm glad for it! 3D design elements make a lot of sense on those kinds of displays, because they work well to stand out despite the relatively low resolution and color contrast.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#147

Post by mbg721 »

vehemenz wrote: post #144
eplanit wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's similar to the past 2-3 years in television advertisements, where it's also tiresome how one single idea gets copied and copied and copied by every other advertiser. In particular, in the spirit of "inclusiveness", and further driven by BLM, black people are now the default people shown in practically every ad. If aliens were to evaluate the earth based on TV ads, they'd conclude that the USA is about 60% black.…

I would argue it started around 2013 or 2014, but we've seen more or less the same thing. I haven't watched TV in a few years, so maybe it's gotten worse. One thing I always thought was interesting; Apple commercials, which go out of their way to feature many types of racial minorities, do not show any: - obese people - weirdly proportioned people - ugly people - poor people - person over 45 - meatheads - Republican-…

There's a Whose Line Is It Anyway bit from a couple decades ago where Wayne Brady (musically talented, athletic, young, black guy) says "How come there's no one who looks like me on 'Friends'??" The audience says "Aww" in sympathy. And then Colin Mochrie (balding, awkward, white Canadian guy) repeats "How come there's no one who looks like me on 'Friends'??"

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#148

Post by sidpatil »

proggy wrote: post #67
FredPret wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard of this before. It’s an elaborate parody... right?

It is absolutely real [1][2], and was quite the scandal at the time. If the reporting is to be believed, PepsiCo paid about $1 million for the branding strategy. All to arrive at a blob that looks like a fat person with a red shirt and blue pants separating from each other at the waistline [3]. So yes, it is a bit unreal. [1] https://adage.com/article/agency-news/breathtaking-word-purp... [2] https://www.fastcompany.…

> All to arrive at a blob that looks like a fat person with a red shirt and blue pants separating from each other at the waistline

So what you're saying is that their new logo was really just their old mascot [1] who had let themselves go?

[1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=pepsi%20man&tbs=img...

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#149

Post by JetAlone »

proggy wrote: post #67
FredPret wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard of this before. It’s an elaborate parody... right?

It is absolutely real [1][2], and was quite the scandal at the time. If the reporting is to be believed, PepsiCo paid about $1 million for the branding strategy. All to arrive at a blob that looks like a fat person with a red shirt and blue pants separating from each other at the waistline [3]. So yes, it is a bit unreal. [1] https://adage.com/article/agency-news/breathtaking-word-purp... [2] https://www.fastcompany.…

I still remember the first time someone pointed it out to me all those years ago... I'll skip the steps of charting out hundreds of circles for millions of dollars and just say that I interpret it as a hyperreality.

Re: Why does every advert look the same? Corporate Memphis

#150

Post by RobertKerans »

mbesto wrote: post #33

> “From a design point of view, it’s pretty lazy,” says Hurley. I love designers criticizing design used for business. It rarely incorporates any perspective on business objectives. As long as the design is achieving its goal then who cares?

Because design/illustration can be demonstrably meaningful and/or useful and/or informative &c. Whereas this is a nullification: at this point in time [as it reaches a kind of saturation point] it's a mass-produceable toolkit for generating inoffensive fluff to fill space. In the sense that it cannot fail at doing nothing much, then sure, it has succeeded. But the goal is to...do what exactly? It's kitsch. Good design tends to take quite a bit of thought: this takes very little. Hence, lazy.
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