Brand - Muji

On week 9's lecture we learned brand and identity communication. 
In my opinion, Muji is definitely a successful brand, which have a very clear-cut brand image and positive brand identity.

 

The name Muji is derived from the first part of Mujirushi Ryōhin, translated as No Brand Quality Goods.

 

Muji is distinguished by its design minimalism, emphasis on recycling, avoidance of waste in production and packaging, and no-logo or "no-brand" policy.

In 1983, the first directly operated Muji store opened － product range was developed to offer cheap good quality products and were marketed using the slogan “Lower priced for a reason.”

In 1991, Mujirushi Ryōhin opened its first international store in London.

 

Unbranded campaign – advertising keep clean and simple - Multiple print ads show the many products MUJI sells as well as focus on the products itself rather than the brand.

Muji to Go – related to travel – aim to promote a range of quality and functional travel items that make your trip preparation and travel time fuss free and comfortable.

Homework - during wk 7

People People People

Pain Pain Pain

Change Change Change

Response:  
The most eye catching part is the text 'pain'. 
The black and white texts forms a good construction with the color crowd and the astronaut 
 

Description:

There are many repetitions for the word - 'pain'.

Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain

And among the word pain, you can also see the 4 words of 'change', and 2 rolls of 'people'

Below the 2 rolls of people, there is a crowd . 

An astronaut is flying away from the crowd with balloons.

Analysis and interpretation:

The idea I want to express is 'life and people may bring pains, but we always can make a change.'

Just like how the astronaut fly away with his planet balloons. If anything painful happened, we do not have to feel desperate or hopeless. We can always make a change. 

Evaluation and judgment:

The techniques I used are scale, repetition and deconstruction. 

I enlarged the balloons on the astronaut, to create lightening the visual effect. With a bigger balloon, we feel that the astronaut is like flying. 

Repetition of the word 'pain' also creates an emphasize and overwhelming effect of the painful reality. I feel this part is specifically attracting. 

Deconstruction is used in the crowd. How people are presented as a group and as an individual is interesting. 

The Original Sources

The Process :p

Stencil Art and Paper Art

cut the black

 

I find quite it was quite difficult to find a good image for stencil art. By looking at the image, I can hardly think what will the product look like. I tried many times and finally I have found this image of Lily flower. 

I look at it, and I have an idea of how am I going to create stencil art from it. 

Firstly is the outline, After the line exercise, it is not difficult to get a good outline. And I found It is very interesting to decide which part I should left blank and which part I should fill with black. 

So you can see my outcome, and it is quite obvious that this is a lily flower. Congrats to myself :)

cut the white

 

Now let's see my paper art. I choice a butterfuly because after taking look at so many photos, only this picture can provide me a imageination of the outcome. 

The contrast of the original source is very strong. I think that's why it is not difficult to turn it into a paper art. 

The outcome looks pretty and I like it a lot :)

Another try for Scale

As I feel there is room for improvement in the previous scale exercise. Scale is an interesting technique to apply. So I intended to try it again on objects instead of human face. And I believe I will have a clearer picture about the scale idea.

I would like to name this image ‘Every girl’s flying dream’. It is a romantic photo, isn't it?

Design Process:

1.     I enlarged the balloon into a very very big size.

2.     Then I compare it by squeezing the balloon into a very small size.

I found out that the bigger the balloon size, the more romantic the image is.

Abstraction v.s. Reality

Interestingly, although both my scale exercise used the same technique, scale 1.1 turns to be abstractive and scale 1.2 is very shaped to reality. I won't say that this balloon image have some sense of abstraction, in fact, although it is a romantic creature, it is very realistic.

My understanding to this difference is – the more repeated scale elements you contain in your image, the more abstract it will be, as abstraction is shaping something beyond real life.

Positive and Negative Space

Image 1

 

The original resource is a magazine cover from vogue. A very retro like photography. I was attracted  by the use of color of the photo. The women's face on a wall is presented in light color, and as a construct, the passengers standing and passed by are in dark color. This is very interesting. So I choose this image for my positive and negative space. I was interested to see what will happen. 

  

First the woman on left is colored with black. Details are lost. We can now see she is in all black. However we can still tell that this is black shape may use to be a human figure. 

       

Then the male on right is colored with black paint. but we can still tell that this is a human figure. As in the original image, he also contains many black portion. Hence this move didn't create a lot of differences. However with the two human figure colored with black paint, we can observe that woman's face on wall became more outstanding. Her eyes are every outstanding. Because at first we normally don't pay much attention to the black shape in front of the colored part. 

If we painted the woman's face with black. We observed that a mass of black appeared. Again, detail are lost. And it may be a harm for images like magazine cover, as such image always need many detail to attract attention.  

However I love the third piece especially, with the two human figures painted with black, and the lady face on the wall become super outstanding. In this version, probably the text 'VOGUE' will looks more fit in white color.

Now the background is removed with replacement of white paint. A pure positive & negative space image is created. Bascially all the details on the image is removed. By looking at this version alone, we probably can't figure out what is the image about.

The presence of VOGUE text is important as it indicate the meaning and function of the image as a magazine cover.

Image 2

 

The second image is 2 chairs placing above water. And there is a shirt hanged on the brown chair. By looking at the image, looking at the water, looking at the land behind, I felt peaceful; probably it is because there is no human presentation on this image. Sometimes zero human presentation indeed gives me a quite and peaceful feeling.

 

Firstly I removed the 2 chair. So now the chair's space is placed with white color

Then I came to my 3rd image!

 

The original image - My market day. A very fashion image, colorful and complext

 

Rabbit hat turn to black

 One lady turn to black

 Two lady turn to black

 

All the human features inside the image turn to black

 

The result

And I think if you try to do positive and negative space with a fashion image, then I think it will look very funny. 

Cause in a fashion image you will probably have a lot of exaggerate details, and once the importance details are lost, the picture lose its meaning. 

Collage Exercise

Scale

As I don't have many source pictures in class, so I will test the effect of applying scale technique to this real-person image.

Although I was thinking that scale technique may be better applied in some solid goods other than human face.

Anyway, let’s try!

1.     I scaled up and down the size of his eyes and paste around his original eyes.

2.     Then, I scale down the size of his hand, and paste around his mouth  

3.     The change and effect of scale is not very obvious, this is probably I did too much and was looking forward some artistic effect. But the final outcome looks abundant in layers.

4.      Yes, the end product looks cool.

5.     The new smaller eyes actually looks like a eyebrow of the model  

Abstraction?

The final product actually has some sense of abstraction in inside. Because it doesn’t work in a way that people will normally shape. Normal pictures won't have 3 or 4 hands and a few pair of eyes.

That’s why I would like to say it is abstract.

In week 4 we learnt from  Jan Verwoert  that what forces people to go into abstraction. She mentions that abstraction is something beyond belief because they are manifestations of structural plotting alone. It is beyond the shape life in cities with the physical force.

I think it is quite interesting to think about the reason behind why I created something abstract. Maybe I am also looking for something beyond shaped everyday life.

 

Repetition 

My source for repetition is also a real person’s face image. At first, his artistic and exaggerated eye make up attract me. Hence I was thinking maybe I can do something to his eye make-up

Design process.

1.     I photocopied another 2 set and cut the eye, as I feel the eye is the most impactful and artistic element in the original copy.

2.     Then I pasted them beside the original eyes.

3.     We can notice, as a result, the new image with repetition becomes even more impactful. Probably because now we have 3 sets of the impactful eyes now. The few layers looks like a butterfly mask, surrounded around the man's face.

     

So the original source of my deconstruction is a flying bird. I choose this image because it has a pair of bright and beautiful wings. Hence when I looked at this image, I wan to do something to the bird’s wings.

What will happen if I deconstruct all his wings into pieces? Will the pink looks better in separate parts? With such thoughts, I started cutting.

Deconstruction 

—I actually enjoyed the moment of cutting the feathers apart, there is a feeling of ' I am creating something' during that process

－ The image changed totally, with destruction, the new image has a feeling of 'separate' and that's what I am looking for

－ I was looking forward some 'separation' and 'disorder', or probably 'disobey of the rules'. So you can't tell what the image is in the first look. But while looking at it, you feel interesting. 

And I think the blank white part of the paper doesn't make a good contrast in color. It just looks blank. Hence if those blank parts can be filled with repetition, I believe the final outcome will look even better.

 

See you next week :) 

Line exercise

 

0. The Original - So this is my chosen image, a fashion magazine cover in black and white. Fashionable and elegant. Let's see what happened after I turned it into purely lines. 

 

1. The Outline - Firstly I just traced the outline, without looking at the original image, we still can probably guess that this is a person's figure. You can see the hat, the scarf, and the face's shape. Hence the outline ensures that we know what is happening there. However, we are unable to know the details. We won't be able to know that is this person smiling? crying? or making any kind of facial expression.  

 2. The Detail - Then I chose to trace the eyes and the mouth of that lady. However, as she has a pretty thick make-up and eyeliners, the effect come with only thin lines are pretty interesting. The eye doesn't look like an eye and the lip also doesn't look like a lip. This probably shows how important is thickness important in images.

 3. The everything - Fine, I know this looks scary. In fact I was scared by the effect after I finished line tracing. In fact, my favorite part is the net covered on the lady's face. However, out of my expectation, it turned strange with purely lines! Shock.

 4. The thickness - After adding thicker lines and dots, finally we can see a better image. The emphasis of the net stand out. With thickness of lines, the expression of this image is very clear. Thanks to thick lines!

However, as compare to the original image, the line drawing lacks of shadows and light. Hence with only lines, the image tend to be more flat as compare to the original version