UNIT 1: METHODS OF CONTEXUALIZING
Personal Statement
My group’s research and explorations over the issues of “greenwashing’ made me see how big of an impact it actually has on the public and the environment we live in. Us human beings tend to be quite gullible and can very easily be convinced by ads and their claims as most of us would choose to believe the information and visual content being fed to us rather than question its authenticity. Further, greenwashing leads to tenfold negative impacts on the environment.
The focus of our research landed on the “leakages”or rather the “fugitive emissions” that companies hide from the public through their “sustainable” ad campaigns. We chose the Lacoste “save our species” ad campaign as our case study and ended up finding out several “hidden information” that clearly contradicts Lacoste’s ‘environmental friendliness’ claims. However there were barely any visual data supporting these findings.
This in turn made me very interested in image making and perhaps creating the visuals and infographics to represent said “Leakages” so that the public could make informed decisions when it came to using/ paying for Lacoste products. For instance, Lacoste has been accused multiple times of using forced labor, but majority of the public isn’t aware of this, so I created visuals of lacoste factory workers wearing the “Save Our Species”(“SOS”) ad campaign logos, where in the “species” refers to the laborers rather than the animals.
Annotated Bibliography
2 texts from the reading list:
Weinmayr, E. (2005) One publishes to find comrades (p.54)
In this reading, the author talks about the importance of collaborating and how publishing could be used as a way of initiating such collaboration and participation of us social beings. This resonated with me, as one of the biggest reasons why we can’t seem to achieve climate justice, is simply because many of us choose to not participate or rather not contribute towards sustainable practices. If we collectively collaborated towards sustainable actions, there would be no need to think twice before trusting a new product lest it be greenwashed. Keeping this thoughts in mind, I and my groupmates drafted a rating criteria that people could use to judge the “success” or reliability of “Green”ads, two of said criteria being motivation and collaboration. To elaborate, a “Green” ad must invoke us the want to contribute towards climate justice in order for the ad to be “successful”.
Danah Abdulla (2022), On the Contradictions of Sustainability, Futuress.org, lecture via Futuress
Danah Abdulla’s talk on the contradictions of sustainability made me realize that some of the major contributors to the negative impact of the world are the very ones who keep promoting sustainable products and practices. If they put in half the resources they do into being actually sustainable instead of commercializing, the situation wouldn’t be this problematic. After understanding such contradictions, I analyzed the Lacoste “save our species” ad campaign, where in they replace the iconic crocodile logo with that of animal species that are on the verge of extinction. Yet, the most surprising contradiction was that none of their ads or products even spoke about or mentioned the number of animals remaining (some of which were as low as 90). Consequently, majority of the people weren’t even made aware of the seriousness of the cause, thus ignoring the intention of the ad campaign. This led me to reiterate the species logos using the number of species remaining.
2 texts outside the reading list
Baudrillard, J. (1970). The Consumer Society: Myths & Structures (p. 169)
In his writing about the consumer society, Jean talks about the importance of understanding the consumer for efficient communication and selling of products. However at the same time, this shouldn’t be confused with luring the consumers by using marketing strategies that involve superficial claims or unreliable promises. Many multinational national companies today, unfortunately do the same, they understand how a common man’s brain works and tend to use tactics or strategies that they no would sell, but still keeping in mind to greenwash in order to cover their tracks. These insights brought my teammates and I to the conclusion, as graphic communication designers, we mustn’t just pay attention to the “fugitive emissions” but rather, we must design sustainability in the first place, such that products don’t need to be greenwashed. We need to design products that will make people participate in sustainable actions without giving them a choice.
Chris Westcott. 2021. in CAPS LOCK, Ruben pater untangles the relationship between graphic design and capitalism
In this article, the author explores the complex relationship between graphic designers and capitalism. He advocates for design practitioners to shift towards more morally ethical and socially responsible design practices rather than being driven by capitalism. We are clearly aware of the role graphic designers play in such situations which is that of communicating the hidden information as well as liberation from capitalist mindset. However, after further analysis through much research and using Lacoste’s “Save our Species”Ad campaign as a case study, I wanted to shed light on how as designers we must also create systems that prioritize collective well-being over profit-driven motives.
The entire system of production to consumption needs to be re-designed, as currently said systems only create a bigger negative impact that it does positive towards the environment. If multinational companies, collaborate together and make the collective decision of prioritizing climate justice over capitalism, consumers would be forced to do the same. This needs to be communicated or rather be made compulsory by the government or the concerned authorities to see some sort of productive change towards climate justice.
2 design projects:
Brand, S. (1970) ‘Shelter and land use’, Whole earth catalog, Spring issue, Page 18-17
We selected the whole earth catalog as one of our design project references as we were inspired by the way the author/designer presented the data. He made use of several schematic representations and illustrations, which played a key role in understanding the presented information. Although I found the layout to be somewhat unorganized, I thought it could be quite beneficial for our project. As a result, I created my own version of the “Whole earth catalog” about “Lacoste’s Materiality “as shown below. Since “materiality” is a very tactile process, this topic required several visual aids to understand the presented data, this system of representation was successful. It was challenging to show the true features of the materials as so many of the images tend to flatten the texture of said materials and fabrics. However, I made use of certain effects and editing tools to accentuate these textures. The monotone nature of the catalog also made it helpful to focus more on the texture of the fabrics and the intricate weave patterns which are unique to lacoste.
Auerbach, T. (2020) Spilhaus XIX
Tauba Auerbach’s work on the iterations of world maps using geometry and abstraction was useful. Her way of translating the maps into new and unseen forms but at the same time recognisable/ somewhat understandable was the focus of my insight. This led me to use the world map to create iterations of the quantity and locations of species, factories and shops of Lacoste. These intention behind these iterations were to provide the public with visual aid in understanding Lacoste’s COMPLEX INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF SCALE BETWEEN PEOPLE, LAND & MATERIALS. As a graphic designer, it is our job to communicate such information through visuals, as commercial brands like lacoste, will continually hide information from the public. Taubas’s work also made me understand the power of translating something that people are extremely familiar with (like a map in this case) in order to convey other important messages.