OUGD601 - Research - Fashion Branding Unraveled

Fashion Branding Unraveled by

Kaled K. Hameide

Hameide, K. (2011). Fashion branding unraveled. New York: Fairchild Books.

Brand Failure

- Branding is neither easy nor cheap

- In reality, more products fail then succeed; some sources estimate that about 90% of all new products die within five years, and of those 85% fail shortly after their launch

- The branding process goes through four major steps which can be summed up as:

 1. The brand decision: Customer, Company, Culture

 2. The positioning Strategy

 3. The communication strategy

 4. The brand audit (growth, repositioning, and so on)

- In 1990, Tommy Hilfiger thought that it could compete with chic European brands like Gucci or Prada

- It decided to reduce the size and usage of the very American logo as well as opening up stores in LA hoping to bring in trendy shoppers but this didn't work

- The average shopper's age of the area was much older than the brand's clientele, the move was a big mistake

- The company also decided to introduce Red Label, the short-lived luxury line with no logo attached and for a higher price

- The fact that the line was still attached to the Hilfiger name and image, it never attracted enough new high-end customers

- This strategy was a big failure

- To sum up, the brand was positioned in the wrong markets, at wrong price points, addressing wrong competitors, and targeting wrong customers

Identity Symbols

- Identity symbols include names, logos, typeface and typography, colour, packaging and personality

Names

- Brand name is the first point of contact between product and customer, this makes it an important choice made by the producers

- Need to be memorable and play a role in evoking associations

- Successful branding transforms a name into a trigger by which consumers can recall a brand identity

- Despite this importance, the name alone does not tell us much about a brand, unless it is backed up by a clear personality and meaning

- Criteria for an effective name can be:

 > easy to remember

 > easy to pronounce

 > appropriately significant

 > anticipating potential growth

 > works well with various media options such as prints, TV, and billboards

 > Available to be trademarked and legally protected

Logos and Initials

- Logos come in different shapes and forms that include:

 > monograms (LV and YSL)

 > Signatures

 > Names or abbreviations, such as Dior and Valentino

 > Symbols and shapes such as polo figure, Lacoste crocodile, nike swoosh

- The power of the logo lies in the ability to acquire an international appeal easier than a name can

- In addition, some names may be hard to pronounce in different languages

- Logos are visual interpretations of brand that may be much easier to remember

- Logos can be pure, colourful graphics or a combination of graphic, colour and content

- Some research suggests that the brain acknowledges shape first, then colour, then content

- Effective logos follow many of the principles:

 > need to be memorable

 > are easy to identify and recognise

 > provide an appropriate and consistent image of the brand

 > communicate the brand's personality

 > can be legally protected

 > work well across media in terms of their scale, form, colour

OUGD601 - Research - Brand/ Story

Brand / Story by
J H Hancock

Hancock, J. (2009) Brand/story. New York: Fairchild Books

Notes:

- Fashion Branding defined as "the cumulative image of a product or service that consumers quickly associate with a particular brand; It offers an overall experience that is unique, different, special and identifiable"
- Branding is also "a competitive strategy that targets customers with products, advertising and promotion organised around a coherent message as a way to encourage the purchase and repurchase of products from the same company"

-The advertising medium, context, and style should reflect the brand
 > for luxury items, creating high-quality print advertising for a product leads to a perception of superiority in fashion and quality
- The designer name, brand image and marketing strategy make the product appear unique to various markets
- Fashion branding is the process whereby designers, creative directors and retailers etc give fashion garments a unique identity
 > creating a clear vision and strategy for a company

- In their book Storytelling: branding in practice, Klaus Fog, Christian Budtz and Baris Yakaboylu describe storytelling as the means for creating a brand
- Storytelling process relies on the ability to make an emotional connection through its brand and to build target markets
- Fog et al. believe that a brand reaches full consumption potential when it makes an emotional connection with consumers
- Fog et al. also describe how advertising reflects the message, conflict, character and plot

Context, Consumers, and Meaning

- Jean Hamilton writes an article on "The Macro-Micro Interface in the Construction of Individual Fashion Forms and Meanings"
- Hamiltons theory suggests that, through storytelling, a context is created to entice consumers to repurchase mass-produced items
- Macro arbiters influence the micro-level meanings that consumers associate with their personal products

Negotiations with Self  (Micro) > to Negotiations with Others > to Fashion System Arbiters > to Cultural System Arbiters (Macro)

The following list includes the cultural and fashion system arbiters (macro) who underline this process:

- Designers and product developers
- Fashion ideas created by designers and product developers
- Interaction between designers, media, producers and distributors
- Trends in the cultural systems that may influence e.g. Eastern Religions, art, films, literature

- She goes on to say that fashion garments carry no meanings, it is the arbiters who give them meaning through context and/or display

- In his article " Texture and Taboo: The Tyranny of Texture and Ease in the J. Crew Catalog," Matthew Debord discusses the relevance of J. Crew's reinvention of mail-order catalogue sales in the postmodern era.
- By creating retail catalogues that depict hyperreal lifestyles, J. Crew entices consumers to purchase basic products that they probably already own.
- According to Debord, the catalogue has become a work of art that creates an aura of exclusiveness and allows consumers to shop from the comfort and privacy of their own home.
- The catalogue has created lifestyles that are fantasised and almost surreal
- What is significant about Debord's contextual analysis is his ability to recognise a retailer's talent to create meanings and fantasy associated with mass apparel for selling consumers
- Debord takes an art critic's view when discussing J. Crew's contextual marketing techniques
 > he does not admire the company's ability to generate revenue by creating a totally fantasy lifestyle advertising campaign
- Using a cultural context, the company attaches meaning to its products through the technique of brand/ story

Cultural Branding Through Fashion

- Cultural branding addresses the individuality of the consumer
- Douglas B Holt's concept of cultural branding is branding "derived from brands that have spun such compelling myths that they have become cultural icons"
- Cultural branding applies particularly to categories in which people tend to value products as a means of self-expression
- According to Holt, cultural activists and individuals study popular culture and then develop successful brands
- Brands are assembled through cultural knowledge rather than worrying about traditional consumer research
 > instead of analysing numbers, they come to understand individuals in their cultural context
- This cultural knowledge is developed in the following ways:
 > Examining the roles of major social categories of class, sex, gender and ethnicity in identity construction
 > viewing people holistically, seeking to understand what gives their lives meaning
- To succeed, a cultural brand must reflect an appropriate market
- They must also be consistently reinvented when the market place changes as a reflection of popular culture
- Successful fashion brands become attachments to the customer's lifestyle
 > as a result, the consumer does not feel like a member of mass population, but rather as unique and special
- Ralph Lauren's various divisions reach various cultural markets while reflecting a consistent Ralph Lauren brand message
- Vera Wang has used the cultural institution of marriage to turn her company into a conglomerate that demonstrates understanding of her target market as well as the needs of individuals
- These brand have become what Holt calls iconic fashion brands, which develop culturally contextual stories that consumers can understand and embrace
> this is what makes them successful.

OUGD601 - Research - KAWS

KAWS by
M. Ramírez-Montagut


Ramírez-Montagut, M. (2010). KAWS. New York: Skira Rizzoli.


Notes:

- Brooklyn based designer Brian Donnelly a.k.a KAWS, has created an astute and prolific body of work
- His vast output includes grafitti writings, street art, graphic, product designs including limited to editions and streetwear fashion, drawings and sculptures
- KAWS has a solid record of collaborations with American and Japanese artists such as Pushead and Hajime Sorayama
 > with US companies including Kiehl's, The Simpsons Movie, Nike, Supreme, BAPE and CDG
- KAWS first aesthetic influenced by skateboarding
- very keen graff artist from a young age
- Earned attention through graphical designs painted on trains, walls and billboards
- Grew up in Manhattan & Brooklyn
- Studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts
- "when I first started painting over billboards I was just doing letter pieces like 'KAWS', the way I would do on a wall"
 > then her started to incorporate it into the advertisment
- In 1995 KAWS collaborated with lcal streetwear label Subware
- STASH, FUTURA and Gerb founded GFS: the first label to incorporate the bold graphic elements of graff into T-shirts etc
- "that is when i did my first T-shirt and it was a painting that I did in college. It was like a statue of liberty with a spray can, and after that we did a second shirt with just my skull and crossbones"
- During his years working at Disney as an illustrator, KAWS developed his signature design of a soft and somewhat inflated skull with crossed bones and crossed-out eyes
- During his 1996-99 poster interventions, KAWS has a preference for GUESS and Calvin Klein imagery
- In 1997, KAWS took his first trip to Japan by trading one of his oil paintings for a flight and somewhere to stay
- Once there, he got in contact with a friend of STASH, Yoppi (Yoshifumi Egawa) who ran the label 'realmadHECTIC'
 > KAWS also met Tomoaki Nagao (Nigo) founder of BAPE and Shinsuke Takizawa, founder of Neighbourhood
- All these designers has the power to influence youth culture

Proper introduction to the Fashion World...

- In 1998 HECTIC opened a new shop which had been painted by KAWS, he also designed the invitation for the opening
- HECTIC offered to produce KAWS's first toy edition, fabricated by Bounty Hunter
 > released in 1999 and featured a skinny legged Mickey Mouse body with the signature KAWS head
- In 1999, KAWS was also invited to show his work at Colette, a concept store in Paris famous for presenting new trends in fashion and culture
- That same year, he did a collection for the brand Undercover created by Jun Takahashi a.k.a Jonio
 > this was his first collaboration with a couture brand
- KAWS provided them with original artwork that they then made into patterns for their new line
- The patterns appeared on children's clothes, sneakers, PJs, T shirts and jackets

- Nigo, had seen his BAPE become the most popular street fashion in Japan
- Well known for high-end, meticulous and luxurious apparel with a strong take on hip-hop aesthetics
- His clothes also feature a Japanese cartoon component and offer a unique, modern and playful lifestyle option to his younger customers.
- For the 2001 Tokyo exhibition, KAWS designed a small BAPE head pillow, and Nigo took an interestin his work from that point on.
- Nigo and KAWS collaborated on three collections in 2005 and 2006 for A Bathing Ape
- This was the first time KAWS had invested in and acknowledged the intersection of the patterns he was creating - from which the garments were made - with the fabric, the finishing details and the relevance of the venue
- His goal for the collaboration was that he wanted to reach out to people "not just on the wall, but when they're sitting on the train or just living with stuff"
- He would go on to reach out in this fashion through numerous apparel products including the Chompers baseball jacket, hoodies and sneakers.

- "Keith Harring for me was a pivotal influence, because he was somebody involved in the art world, that wasn't removed or out of reach. With his 'Pop Shop' he made patches and T-shirts and sold them as well as large-scale paintings and sculptures. I thought that it was great there was somebody doing these two things simultaneously. It almost seems like a natrual thing these days to be an artist and make products"

- "I treat T-shirts like a sketchbook. I mean, they are finished, definitely, but a lot of it is just me losing my mind in my studio, sort of. They are free sketches because sometimes they can take me an hour or a couple of days"

-"My work intertwines seamlessly from a jacket to a skateboard to a canvas... I feel it's all just one big ball"

OUGD601 - Research - Couture Graphic

Couture Graphique by
José Teunissen, Hanka Van Der Voet & Jan Brand

Teunissen, J., Voet, H., Brand, J. (2013). Couture graphique. Houten: Terra.

- Tamsin Blanchard

- The label has become its own form of currency 

- It is the markers mark; the reason the garment was sold in the first place

- A simple label can mean the difference between a plain, white T shirt selling for £5.99 or £59.99

- Increasingly, fashion brands rely on packaging & presentation rather than the product itself

- The graphic designer has taken on a status and power within the fashion industry that was unheard of in the early 80s

- Fashion companies have become mini publishing empires, often employing their own graphic design teams

- Lookbooks, catalogues, magazines, adverts etc

- Peter Saville - pioneer in fashion graphics - Case Study?

- An architect might be attracted to a shirt by Comme de Garçon because of the message it is communicating

- Whereas a businessman might be attracted to a shirt from Hugo Boss because the logo speaks to him; it is a confident, direct and has a clear corporate message

- Similar shirts... totally different customers

Unknown Pleasures 

by Joy Division

Peter Saville

In some cases, the graphic designer or art director is also the fashion designer

- Georgio Armani - Case Study?

- He is both art director and fashion director 

- "A designer label is his or her business card"

- " It not only reflects the spirit and integrity of each collection; it also expresses the philosophy and character of the line to the customer. The final product is the most important part of the package, but a label and logo secures a recognisable identity. The graphic identity is  a natural extension to what my products are trying to express or reflect"

- In many cases, the graphic designer takes on a role as important, if not more, than the fashion designer themselves.

- Fabien Baron - Creative Director of Burberry - Case Study?

- Closely involved in many aspects of the British brand's relaunch at the end of the 90s

- Working alongside managing director Rose Marie Bravo, he signalled the new direction of the brand by not only modernising the logo but by creating an advertising campaign before there was any new products to advertise

- Worked with photographer Mario Testino

- Turning Burberry from a purveyor of old-fashioned raincoats to a dynamic, high-fashion, luxury label.

- Walter Van Beirendonck - W&LT - Case Study?

- Has always incorporated graphics into his fashion, both for his own labels and for the streetwear brand

- With help from Paul Boudens, a graphic designer who has worked with many of the new wave of Belgian designers

- Sees graphic design and fashion as so inseperable as to include graphics as part of the fashion degree for students at the prestigious Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts

W&LT

Wild & Lethal Trash!

by Walter Van Beirendonck

- Stella McCartney - Launched her own label under Gucci umbrella in 2002 - Case Study?

- Worked with multidisciplinary creative agency Wink Media set up in London  

- Wink offers a wide range of creative services, including advertising, brand development and corporate identity.

- Stella McCartney was a unique project

- "We were creating a new brand for a very well-known designer, so it was already loaded with values and perceptions, which made it very interesting, but also much more demanding, as the expectations on Stella launching her own label were very high"

- "We would often visit Stella's studio to study the fabrics and the designs so we could get a very clear idea of the collection - and of course the designer behind it"

Stella McCartney

Advertisement 

by Mert & Marcus, 

Ryan McGinley

- For any fashion house, a well-designed, universally recognised logo is the key to commercial success.
- The logo becomes its own currency
- No one has proved this better than Yves Saint Laurent, who has one of the most famous and enduring logos in fashion history
- He was one of the first to turn to a graphics artist for help in translating the abstract idea of a new fashion house into a logo
- He had met A.M. Cassandre through his previous employer, Christian Dior, and he approached him in the late 50s to create his logo
- It is said to have taken just a few minutes
- Even someone who has never owned an item of their clothing could draw out the logo from memory
- Alice Rawsthorn - "It is exquisitely drawn in an instantly recognisable but distinctive style"
                              "Also, its central characteristics fuse perfectly with those of the brand and it has been reproduced more or less consistently over the years. Those are the generic characteristics of any classic logo and the YSL symbol encapsulates them perfectly."
- Fabien Baron - "I would not have changed [the logo] either. Cassandre was one of the best graphic designers in the world. He was an artist. That logo can stay forever. It's beautiful. It's the lettering, the intricacy of the logo, the way the letters are stacked up. It's very elegant and very French with a sense of history. It would be like going to Egypt and changing the pyramids"

- It was in the 80s, however, that fashion houses began to graphic design seriously. Yohji Yamamoto's creative director, Marc Ascoli, was persuaded into hiring Peter Saville by Nick Knight, a photographer who had come to his attention after a series of one hundred portaits of the 80s for i-D magazine

- Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak - M/M (Paris) 
- Their way of making people notice the brand was to take the Calvin Klein logo and rip it up and start again
- They re-drew it, as a school kid might make a doodle. They felt the CK brand had become schizophrenic and needed to have a single stamp to bring it all back together.

- At their best, graphic designers have brought to the fashion industry another set of eyes, a fresh perspective and an uncompromising vision

- At worst, they are simply another marketing tool, a way for the designer to create a visual peg on which to hang the sales of perfumes, face creams, scarves and T shirts.

- Towards the late 80s, along with the recession, it looked as though there was nowhere else to go for graphic design within the fashion industry, it just seemed pointless
- However, it had already had a knock-on effect as a new generation of graphic designers had been studiously collecting those Yamamoto catalogues, as well as Six
- Six - the groundbreaking magazine published by Comme de Garçon which was one of the most defining moments of the fusion between fashion and graphics

Six

Groundbreaking magazine

Comme de Garçon

- Peter Saville - " I looked at the scene in the mid-nineties and fashion had really embraced graphics"
- BUT perhaps it has gone too far.
- The design has overtaken the content
- Although it is what he wished for, Saville confesses that he didn't really want it to turn out like this...
- "Design is the new advertising. It's the insidious influence. It was better when it was a form of rebellion, when you had to fight with business. Now it's the other way around, It's entirely superficial"

Revisiting Previous 
Dissertation Examples

For inspiration, I visited the library where I had access to last years dissertations. I had a look through them to see whether anybody had answered a similar question or topic that I intend to explore.

The two relevant questions that I found were 'To what extent does branding determine the success of a clothing company' and 'The relationship between graphic design and fashion, the concept of 'Lifestyle' and their connection to it'

I had a read through the introductions and contents page of each essay to get an understanding of structure as well as content.

OUGD601 - Research - Graphic Design for Fashion

Graphic Design for Fashion
Jay Hess & Simone Pasztorek

Hess, J. and Pasztorek, S. (2015). Graphic design for fashion. Johanneshov: MTM.

- Increased sense of creative potential when the GD studio is commissioned by the fashion industry
- Relationship between GD and fashion was not fully realised until Peter Saville was commissioned for the Autumn/ Winter 1986/87 Lookbook for Yohji Yamamoto - defining moment for modern Fashion Communication
- Branding is considered a promise, an experience and a memory
- The message must communicate the ambition of the label


Acne Art Department for 
Acne Studios

- Multidisciplinary Acne collective, based in Stockholm
- ACNE is the acronym of 'Ambition to Create Novel Expression', also referring to a skin condiiton
- Their branding has been so successful that a survey of University students in Stockholm found that the majority of them associated 'Acne' primarily with jeans, not skin problems
- Central to the branding exercise is Acne Paper, a seasonal fashion magazine that is the flagship of Acne Studio's visual communication
 > biannual fashion magazine
 > initial purpose was a vehicle to promote the brand aesthetics and act as a moodboard
 > provides a collab showcase for whole 'family' under the Acne umbrella
- Graphic Design and art direction are an integral part of fashion - Jonas Jansson
- In modern society, fashion is more than the production of clothing
- With an acute self-awareness they blur the line between graphic designer, client and audience with great effect
- The shopping bag offers another opportunity to reinforce the brand inspirations
- Maximising every opportunity, wrapping tissue paper is customised each season

Acne Paper

Front Covers

Layouts

Maximising Every Opportunity

Shopping Bag

Anothercompany for

Tenue De Nîmes

- Launched by Joachim Baan in 2007

- Baan is clear about the importance of narrative - "the most important thing in our work is to tell stories"

- Inspired by simplicity, creativity and detailing; this philosophy is a direct parallel with the label Tenue De Nîmes

- Baan employs sophisticated details embodied with a personal touch to build a subtle message and atmosphere of consistency

- Originally employed as an art director, Baan eventually became a partner of the clothing label

- There is an integrity to raw denim that has been directly translated into the branding - "In every single aspect pf its communication we wanted to implement the concept of denim"

- Baan is not limited to print, taking the branding to the shop itself - a stencil logo on the window

- The success of the Journal De Nîmes justified its launch into quarterly duotone newspaper - it explores the the aesthetic world of Tenue de Nîmes

- The use of a heavy weight tote bag reinforces the brand values outside the retail environment relating to the materiality and hardwearing qualities of denim

Branding

Journal de Nîmes

Deeva-Ha for 

Gar-De

- Gar-de has been an on going project for Pete Deevakul and Jiminie Ha since they were commissioned to establish the branding for its debut Autumn/Winter 2008/09 collection.
- They were encouraged to take creative ownership of the project
- "we have the freedom to interpret the brand in a unique way that simultaneously respects and subverts traditional means in fashion"
- Its name derives from the French for 'to guard'
- "we intend to make every project and extension of our own process as artists and professionals in the commercial world"
- The rubber stamp letterhead subverts the industry's conventional perfection and offers an accessible alternative that feels fresh and immediate.
- Intent on breaking away from the computer, DEEVA-HA develop concepts and strategies that combine the hand-made with the machine
- They have found the balance between photography and graphic design

Branding

Sanderson Bob for
Yutaka Tajima

- Sanderson launched Yutaka Tajima to initiate collaboration with a vast range of people
- Having developed a simple geometric Y logo, the brand undergoes continual change as contributors interpret the logo.
- " We make simple T-shirts with one colour ink and one logo. It just depends on what people turn it in to"
- As a fashion label Yutaka Takima is a literal branding exercise, shifting the focus and creativity from the product solely onto the logo
- An example of a fashion label that is led purely by artists and designers