by Christo van der Westhuizen. The challenge with a feature like this is, in part, definitional: What, actually, is a postmodern brand in a late capitalist society? Is it about being disruptive, constantly testing the boundaries? Or is it about storyscaping, moving beyond the product or service to a more culturally expansive viral adventure, and therefore much harder to define?

In “Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, Jameson (1991/1984) asserts that postmodernism in the arts (characterised by pastiche and schizophrenia) comprises the cultural logic of late capitalism. In short, culture in postmodernity has been commodified while commodities have become cultural.

This reversal of roles also highlights the essential difference between postmodernism and postmodernity. Whereas postmodernism — like modernism — is a praxis, a way of doing things to achieve a particular outcome (eg change), postmodernity is the economic or cultural condition of society after modernity.

It is an altogether more-attuned perspective than the familiar notion that postmodernity is about being more modern than modernity, ie a chronological construct, and that we have now entered a post-postmodern era. This stands in stark contrast to present-day branding and advertising which aims at preventing products from “looking like the interchangeable commodities they really are” (Manes, 1997: F7).

Today, romancing the target market is what it’s about. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. No tale, no sale. The prolific Irish postmodernist Stephen Brown said as much back in the late 1990s: “Many postmodern advertisements eschew informational appeals — the mainstay of the modern advertising tradition — in favour of imagery, endowing mundane products with magical, mystical, and otherworldly qualities (Brown et al, 1998: 202).” And this has not changed; to the contrary, it has strengthened.

Fact is, in an age of transition when modernism and postmodernism coexist, albeit uneasily, late capitalism without strong, purposeful brands is impossible. The brand as a social and economic construct has never been more important as a key ingredient of economic success, or its converse, than right now.

The problem — and the opportunity — is that the brand construct’s evolution is now happening at an accelerating speed. Kotlerites and other inveterate disciples of modern marketing theory are, without doubt, gasping for air to keep up with what could only be described as postmodern marketing praxis. Staying ahead of the curve has become a futile dream in the era of postmodernity where praxis supersedes marketing methodologies, with the latter informed by catch-up hypothesising and post-mortem academic conjecturing. Nonetheless, modern marketing theories, tenets and axioms will continue to serve budding and practicing marketers well for a long time to come, albeit for the pedagogic sake of acquiring and clarifying the thriving meta-language of this growing field of study.

As Firat et al (1994: 53) observe:

“Marketing and postmodernity are so intertwined that it is no longer possible to treat the two subjects at arm’s length or as peripherally-related topics. If marketing is the master-narrative of postmodernity, as we have argued, then marketing scholarship has to move to the centre of the ongoing discussions of postmodernity in the humanities and the social sciences. Marketing can no longer pretend to be an instrumental discipline that affects consumers and society but has to become reflexive and has to be studied as the sociocultural process that defines postmodern society.”

The question this raises is whether brands are evolving — at a very practical level, and despite theory — to such an extent that one could draw a clear distinction between modern and postmodern brands?

The — evolving — brand era

The brand era, being the third — and current — era of marketing (preceded by product-centrism and customer-centrism) according to Kotler (2010), is essentially premised upon the modernist marketing philosophy that a brand is the representation of a product or service. A shadow of the real. An imitation or simulation. An identifying mark and, by implication, a contrived copy.

The very notion of representation in marketing can partly be traced back to the ancient Norse word “brenna”, meaning to burn, and more specifically the act of farmers marking their livestock to identify ownership. This basic means of differentiation progressively foregrounded the importance of the distinguishing mark, or logo, in marketing theory and praxis.

It is understandable then that, given its obvious importance, the company logo’s signifying ability became a massive focus in brand formulation over time. After all, the logo is the brand’s foremost mark of representation: a visual point of convergence which embodies not only a company’s visual language but indeed its positioning.

Simply put, brands had to look the part and, for that, an aesthetic collaboration with the arts was called for, from designing the logo to creating the brand’s visual language for different forms of representation — eg as collateral, advertising, packaging, point of sale.

But whereas the logo used to be thought of as the brand en tout at the onset of the modern marketing era, the pioneering insights of theorists like David Aaker reduced it to a representation or identifying mark of the actual brand which, in turn, soi-disant, became the legitimate representation of the real product, service or organisation. In fact, so important has the modern brand become that it is no longer primarily a visual identity, but indeed a representation and/or expression of what the product, service or organisation stands for.

Sell the sizzle, not the steak

“Sell the sizzle, not the stake” is probably the best postmodern aphorism in the history of marketing. Yet too often marketers equate the ‘sizzle’ with one or other random emotion that could somehow be attributed to a unique selling proposition (USP), ie the product’s triumph over science, logic and rationality. Today, in true postmodern fashion, emotion supersedes rational considerations and modernism’s celebration of logic and science.

What is more interesting, though, is the intellectual point of convergence between modernism and postmodernism when the particular kind of emotion the brand wishes to elicit (postmodernism) and become known for through storytelling, is directly informed by the brand’s strategic intent (modernism): Volvo is safety. BMW is performance. Starbucks is respite. Calvin Klein is sex. Coronation is trust. Coke is happiness. Apple is different. AVBOB is family. Redefine Properties is people. The list is endless.

Every top brand’s strategy can nowadays be summarised in a single word, ie the positioning referred to by Aaker as “the face of your business strategy”. No longer a mere imitation, simulation or representation of a product, service or organisation, the contemporary brand strategy formulation is decidedly postmodern in nature. It dogmatically posits a moment of pure and unmediated presence — something tangibly ‘there’.

Aligning the marketing strategy with the business strategy used to be the main drive, whereas today, aligning story — and hence, emotion — with positioning has become the holy grail of marketing, and this needs to be evocatively actualised in the contact space.

To cite an example: Positioned as the family brand, AVBOB’s unorthodox focus on poetry was inspired by people’s inability to express their loss in the face of bereavement, and is perfectly aligned with its brand promise: We’re here for you.

Similarly, for Redefine Properties, the irreverent people brand, property is its commodity but people are its business: We’re not landlords. We’re people.

Reversing the roles: The product/service as an imitation of the brand

“It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself.” —Jean Baudrillard (1983)

The main thesis then, namely, that brands are ‘real’, or ‘hyperreal’ to be more precise (as opposed to them being mere imitations of the product or service), is a radical reversal of the traditional modernist sign system ‘product/service/organisation: real’ → ‘branding/marketing/imitation: representation’.

Just like Derrida in “Of Grammatology” (1997/1974: 6-18) contends that writing is not a mere (‘phonetic’) supplement, mediation or deferment of speech, one could argue that brands are not a mere supplement, mediation or deferment of the real (the product, service or organisation).

Whereas the modern brand is both an imitation and representation of the real (product, service or organisation), the postmodern brand is exactly the opposite in the sense that it influences, informs and dictates the (organisation’s) approach to products, service and customers. The implied rationale is that the brand becomes the object of desire: the one which is imitated, and not the product or service. The postmodern brand’s job is to position the product/service. The product/service has to remain true to that positioning.

To cite an example, consider how effortlessly vastly disparate products and services converge in master brands like Virgin (an airline, spa business, balloon flights, banking, etc), enabling horizontal extension that otherwise, without the branded house architecture, would have been considered schizophrenic in modern marketing terms.

in Jean Baudrillard’s critical dissemination of the intertwined concepts of imitation, mimesis, simulation and simulacrum (1983a, 1983b, 1988 & 1998), he contends that, in the collapse of reality into hyperrealism, preferably on the basis of another reproductive medium like advertising, the real is volatilised from one medium to another. More than representing a product or service, the so-called real, the postmodern brand promotes the consumers’ relationship with the science and artform that represents the renovation of experience.

Schizophrenia & pastiche: Juxtaposition of opposites

The collapse of traditional boundaries is another key feature of postmodernism. To draw a line between, say, psychology and sociology, or media studies, journalism, marketing and philosophy, is no longer desirable. Pastiche has replaced parody, and a rapidly evolving form of eclecticism marks the transition from modern(ist) branding and marketing to postmodern(ist) branding and marketing.

The postmodern habit of juxtaposing “anything with anything else” (Firat and Venkatesh, 1995: 255), no matter how induced, typically introduces an accepted form of binary discontinuity which breaks down category barriers like male/female, future/past and production/consumption. When these abstractions are recast as difference (e. creativity = entertainment), the merger of opposites results in hybrid offspring that break down category barriers such as property/people (Redefine Properties), funerals/poetry (AVBOB), and farmers/small patches of land (Nisboere).

Stephen Brown (1990: 212) writes:

“In so far as juxtapositions are a condition of the postmodern world, the expectation of a clear and comprehensible outcome no longer obtains. Whereas the modernist New Critics presumed eventual clarification of ambiguous pairings and the structuralists presumed eventual reconciliation of binaries, post-structuralists accept disjuncture, inconsistency, and irreconcilable opposites.”

Is branding a modern institution in a postmodern world?

Whereas production is the dominant scheme of the industrial era, simulation is the reigning scheme of the current phase that is controlled by the code (Baudrillard, 1994: 83). But it is the co-existence of overlapped production and simulation in popular culture that begs the question: Is branding, and advertising, a modern institution in a postmodern world? Baudrillard frames the overlap as a form of tension.

Brown (1990: 213) asserts that this tension extends to branding and advertising, where the information-driven model (the dominant modernist paradigm) rubs up against the imagery-driven model of the postmodernists.

Old-school business methodologies, ranging from McCarthy’s 4 Ps and Borden’s marketing mix to Theodore Levitt’s customer-centric perspectives on positioning and segmentation, have become mere pieces of a rather puzzling puzzle for those who used to draw a line so boldly between business, marketing and creativity/the arts. Simply put, the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone, to draw on Smuts’ notion of holism.

These widely accepted explanations of marketing fundamentals — which culminated in the publication of popular textbooks like Kotler and Keller’s copious “Marketing Management” in 1997 — have been crucial for marketing’s recognition as an academic discipline. It would even be plausible to argue that these theories, tenets and axioms will continue to serve budding and practicing marketers well for a long time to come, albeit for the pedagogic sake of acquiring and clarifying the thriving meta-language of this growing field of study.

Ultimately, modernist or postmodernist, present-day marketers’ objectives are no different from their predecessors, namely, to make a sale and become part of the customer’s life. The challenge, today, is however vastly different, namely, being heard above the noise and clutter while trying to pin down an ever-increasing illusive customer who lives in the decidedly fragmented omnichannel.

In this philosophical wasteland, marketers must learn to become masters of ambivalence and juxtaposition. In moving on from storytelling to storyscaping — where the hyperreal replaces the difference between reality and illusion — we have to become comfortable with the disturbing thought that, as Brown (2001: 209) mused: @Modern marketing can’t admit to being magical, because to do so automatically undermines what little credibility it has.@

The ongoing debate about the postmodern brand — about its politics, about the claims it makes, about representation and power — carries on in the work of prominent postmodernists such as Stephen Brown, who will tell you that postmodern marketing has been around for a long time but is only now being accepted into the business school’s science-or-bust mindset, which is gradually breaking down to make room for a new vocabulary. It is about time, and the arts may assist in this challenging task. After all, storytelling postmodern brands and consumers are cohabitating each other’s mind in ways that are new and diffused and uncontainable. What they are and what they want for themselves is a culture in which brands and meaning, wound together with clockwork precision, live in the ether.

The point of simplicity is to highlight the bare, unadorned beauty of an art form without relying on shallow elements. The more you remove ornamentation, the more you reveal the ingenuity of design.

In the 1960s, artists rebelled against the complex, overwrought work of previous eras. Remember the frenzied strokes and layered splatters popularized by artists like Jackson Pollock? 

Abstract expressionism reigned in the 1940s and 50s, overwhelming the eyes with visual chaos. Known as action painting, this spontaneous style was meant to capture a subject’s emotions in the moment.

Many artists believed abstract expressionism was too subjective. While the art might have meaning for the artist who painted it, not everyone could see or connect with these deeper associations. Minimalists didn’t want art to rely on personal or external references to have meaning. 

Anyone viewing a piece of art should be able to perceive its message and respond authentically in the moment. The solution? Artists experimented to find out how many visual elements they could remove while still creating raw, striking images.

The modern minimalist movement is just one thread in a long history. Major influences include the Suprematist and De Stijl movements of the early 20th century. Historians also link the style to classic Japanese design that emphasized clean lines and forms.

However it began, one thing is clear about minimalism. The trend tends to reappear when people are collectively bored by overly ornate art. New designers find innovative techniques to reinvent the style and build upon the fundamentals.


Minimalism is always evolving, but its core elements have remained the same. Clean lines. Elementary shapes. Simple colors. The least possible amount of ornamentation. Why? Simple designs are easier to look at and remember.

For now, brand identity design is thriving. Branded design environments (like a website with an integrated design strategy expressing brand qualities) can coexist with traditional logo design. In the future — as always — it’s creative thinking that will lead the way. One valuable asset will be the willingness to take a risk when it comes time to develop a strategy for a brand’s visual persona. The faster technology propels our culture, the more design risk-takers we’re going to need.

Whatever changes may come, one thing will remain. As graphic artists and designers, we possess the power (just as any two year-old with a crayon does) to ascribe meaning to the world around us. We put an expressive face on raw information. The fundamental desire of humans to understand the world in visual terms is a desire that we can understand and foster. Graphic design’s ability to provide meaning and useful information will prove more valuable than ever during uncertain and challenging times.

The goal was clarity, order, and a universally understood visual language. And we can see this in current practice with designer steering away from cluttered unclear design and this method is taught by design schools, colleges, and Universities but there still is lots of current designers rebelling against this and trying new skills and techniques.  

 

 

In addition Modernism, (2021) states that “the birth of modern graphics coincided with the moment when modern graphic designers were striving to create clear-cut systems and concepts rather than to display artistic genius.” Upon reflection this shows the social and economic development of the modernism movement where it can be seen that modern graphics were starting to be used to communicate an idea or design in a simpler way and eliminate the complex nature of the past eras, one can also see how modernism has influenced the contemporary art movement today and still will in the future eras. Such as we can see this with the use of bold colors, simple shapes, and modern fonts are all common elements of modernist graphic design. Airbnb offers a great example of a modernist logo with Its modern twist on the simple design. Our contemporary culture is visual, now even more so than ever before. We are constantly bombarded with text, images, and symbols everywhere we look. If we must be subject to design, we should hope it is a thoughtful design that communicates clearly. And in a complex and visual society, simplicity is often the most effective and meaningful. Historically, Modernism is regarded as the golden era of graphic design, with that notion extending to logo design as well. Compilation books of modernist logos are still published today, reflecting back on a time in which simplicity and clarity were paramount. It seems every contemporary rebrand or new company logo is reviewed and critiqued through the lens of modernist design.

This in essence shows that Bauhaus artists created new imagery by stripping away the inessentials, and they were able to create complex visuals using only a few strategically placed shapes.

(100 years of Bauhaus: what famous logos would look like in Bauhaus style, 2021) states "An early evangelist for minimalism, Bauhaus design ascribed to “less is more”—but not at the cost of function. For product design, Bauhaus designers saw minimalism as a tool to improve effectivity and improve productivity, but for the visual arts, that same principle allowed new opportunities for expressionism and aesthetics."

This shows that Bauhaus designers came up with the idea to combat social and economic developments by using simple and modern ways to express the world they and we live in and take inspiration from new technology advancements of electricity as previously stated it allowed for more productivity and in favor shows the cultural mindset of the artist /designer and how that has changed through the eras and movements with the technobabble advances and use of modernist mindsets.

while reading (100 years of Bauhaus: what famous logos would look like in Bauhaus style, 2021) it states ""At the time, German typography was highly regimented; heavy and ornamental fonts were the standard, and there were proper dos and don’ts for how typography was handled. And while Bauhaus design had its own rules for typography (no combining upper- and lower-cases, only use sans-serif fonts, etc.), they’re largely responsible for first breaking the laws of typography and opening the doors for more artistic usage of text. For example, Bauhaus designers were among the first to set type vertically and diagonally, as well as wrapping text around images. The look of the letters themselves showed creativity, too, with exaggerated stems, geometrical influence and minimalist compositions of trends".  
This merging of german typographer highly regimented layout style and the original idea of Bauhaus led to a radical transformation of the meaning of “Bauhaus” This leads to the belief that social and economic trends have had a great impact on the Capitalist society and that they flourished in the Capitalist society but not so much in the Democratic society by which you can say more or less what you think and feel. As noted throughout this analysis we can see that this is still the case today.

these visual examples show the social and economic trends have had a great impact on the Capitalist society and that they flourished in the Capitalist society but not so much in the Democratic society by which you can say more or less what you think and feel. As noted throughout this analysis we can see that this is still the case today.

According to Marketing et al., (2021)"  We can see more achievements in the time to come as the technology becomes closer to human intelligence." That  said, AI is still pretty much dependent on us and requires inputs from graphics designers to do most of the tasks. So, for now, AI has simplified graphics design to a great extent, at least for people who don’t have a design background.

According to Marketing et al., (2021)"AI tools are all the rage today. However, the good news is that graphic designers needn’t fear them. This is because at least at this stage, AI can only serve to make graphic design easier.AI tools can limit the legwork for graphics designers and perform repetitive tasks for them so that they can focus on the bigger picture. In other words, AI is not going to replace designers but merely work as their assistants. At least that’s what we can surmise for now.

This is because there are some major limitations of AI today: AI has come a long way today, but it’s far from being even comparable to human intelligence. This is because we humans have emotional intelligence which AI doesn’t have.

We are capable of understanding body language, the subtle changes in voice and tone, and the messages we get when we read between the lines. This understanding of common nuances is absent in AI.

So, it can be difficult to make an AI software understand what we really want it to do when there are subtleties in the design. This has changed from

According to (Marketing et al., 2021)"What makes us humans special is our ability to imagine. So many geniuses who walked on the face of the Earth created music, paintings, and poems that are simply out of the world and can’t be replicated. AI doesn’t have that kind of capacity- it can’t imagine."We know that ecommerce has exploded today. However, many people still prefer shopping from local stores.

This is because they get a personalized experience by shopping offline- the friendly store owner can understand their requirements and give recommendations in a way that can’t be matched by an online service.

Artificial intelligence is a powerful technology and there is no dearth of its merits. It’s disrupted many industries and we can see more achievements in the time to come as the technology becomes closer to human intelligence.

the historic , contempaory and soical impact of AI and that of Human Intelligence is that AI is still pretty much dependent on us and requires inputs from graphics designers to do most of the tasks. So, for now, AI has simplified graphics design to a great extent, at least for people who don’t have a design background.And the the historic dvelopemnt of AI are in early stages but saying that its AI will not effect social impact as AI doesnt allow us to mimic the social traits of us human beings.

Marketing, D., Community, M., learningMobileVoice, E., Hospitality, D., us, &. and Dean, C., 2021. Design by computers: How AI is changing the graphic design industry - ClickZ. [online] ClickZ. Available at: <https://www.clickz.com/design-by-computers-how-ai-is-changing-the-graphic-design-industry/262191/> [Accessed 28 March 2021].

according to (Logo Makers: Is automation a threat to logo designers? - Entrepreneur Handbook, 2021) "the advancement of technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, logo makers are becoming more and more powerful". With this there is now a growing concern amidst graphic designers who have worked hard for years learning and mastering the skills required to create imaginative, powerful, and creative logo designs that they will be replaced by such technologies.

Also (Logo Makers: Is automation a threat to logo designers? - Entrepreneur Handbook, 2021) states "The growth and development of automated and advanced logo designer software available in the market is becoming a concern for the graphic design industry. There are many low cost options on the market that don’t require specific or technical skills. "
An example of a product would be Tailor Logo which is a platform that automates logo design.This kind of research as creatives  have us feeling optisict and also fearful that we will be run by robots with some creatives seeing the positives and some seeing the negative but our thought processes and think cant be mimicked by a Online logo generator. Upon reflection this shows the social and economic development of Online logo generator  by which  Humans still take the lead in creativity as Computers and software are used to take care of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks such as records-maintenance, complex calculations, content development, delivery, etc. However, they can’t replicate human creativity

Lastly  (Logo Makers: Is automation a threat to logo designers? - Entrepreneur Handbook, 2021) states "There is a fear among the young professionals that next-generation technologies and robots will take over their jobs".This kind of research as creatives  have us feeling optisict and also fearful that we will be run by robots with some creatives seeing the positives and some seeing the negative but "However, the truth is that robots will not just take jobs, they will create them. On the other hand, even though advanced logo makers are becoming popular, they can’t replace graphics designers. The following are some of the reasons why A human eye is important for branding

A software can get the general idea about your brand and design a logo based on it. However, you can convey your ideas more clearly to an actual graphic designer. More importantly, you can have a discussion with them and bounce ideas off each other to conceptualise a design that aptly meets your requirements.

In conclusion, the answer to the million dollar question “Will AI replace creative jobs?” is a resounding “no”! Most experts believe that it won’t replace our ability of emotional expression and imagination but rather enhance it in some form or another.

Entrepreneur Handbook. 2021. Logo Makers: Is automation a threat to logo designers? - Entrepreneur Handbook. [online] Available at: <https://entrepreneurhandbook.co.uk/logo-makers-is-automation-a-threat-to-logo-designers/> [Accessed 28 March 2021].

 

Find what you need. Faster.
According to (Adobe Sensei, 2021) it suggests "This will have a drastic impact on social, cultural and political development as Artificial intelligence will definitely cause our workforce to evolve. The alarmist headlines emphasise the loss of jobs to machines, but the real challenge is for humans to find their passion with new responsibilities that require their uniquely human abilities.

Timesavers make creation effortless.
 According to (Adobe Sensei, 2021) it suggests "Eliminate time-consuming tasks with features in Adobe Premiere Rush, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and much more, so you have more time for creating.And also Another issue is ensuring that AI doesn't become so proficient at doing the job it was designed to do that it crosses over ethical or legal boundaries.

 According to (Adobe Sensei, 2021) it suggests Adobe IllustratorCreate, edit and design faster than ever.

Your favourite vector graphics editor is even better, faster and stronger with AI. Adobe Sensei takes time-consuming tasks and makes them engaging, simple and efficient."

 According to (Adobe Sensei, 2021) it suggests Adobe Font find the perfect font every time.In a world of countless fonts, Adobe Sensei in Adobe Fonts makes it easy for designer to search, manage and find the exact right font for your projects.Identify the font type of texts when a text region is well-segmented out and fed to a pretrained neural network.

This will have a drastic impact on social, cultural and political devlopment As Artificial intelligence will definitely cause our workforce to evolve. The alarmist headlines emphasise the loss of jobs to machines, but the real challenge is for humans to find their passion with new responsibilities that require their uniquely human abilities.

(Adobe Sensei, 2021)
Adobe.com. 2021. Adobe Sensei. [online] Available at: <https://www.adobe.com/in/sensei.html#> [Accessed 28 March 2021].

One of the most exciting things about the history of logo design is that, despite its deep roots and extensive chronology, so much remains open to interpretation—and it continues to unfold before our eyes. Our ability to represent ourselves and things that matter to us symbolically will generate countless additional innovative iterations of our fascinating shared culture and history as we create new symbols and signs.

Competition got tougher, advertising and marketing budgets got bigger and the modern design, advertising and marketing industries were born. These professionals dedicated their careers to refining logo designs and figuring out what makes the most successful logos in the modern world (HINT: it’s all about saying all of the above in as simple a way as possible).

You can see for yourself how the trends have constantly gone towards simpler designs that still encompass the values of communication, identification, uniqueness and memorability.

For example, modernism is still a strong histrpoic move,emt that influnce both the histrpoic , contempoary social, economic impact of this era by which i mean its suggested thta flat design is the new modernsit take on monderism and the swiss design movement looking at typography hasmt really chnage and designer snd lettering artist still chnaglle the typogrpahy and the way the public protary it .