media meditation two. the key to successful product sales-21st century edition.

A friend showed me this website the other day and I instantly fell in love. A trove of beautiful package design, just in time for my branding/package design class I'm taking, at Champlain College. The Lovely Package site gathers unique and charming design from all over the globe and even include some really nice student work.

Reflecting on how packaging severely influences sales and a customer's decision, I thought of how Neil Postman's concepts of how physical aesthetic appeals must be made to the viewer, in exchange for some support. In his book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, Postman discusses how "fat, bald" presidents don't get elected anymore, and the cause of that is directly our utilization of visual forms of conveying a message. Television effectively molds our opinions, and our standards, for looks and what's "good" without making a justification of why. And without broadcasting the true message. That, hand-in-hand with sharp persuasive methods, can sway a crowd, or a population.

Back to packaging, Apple is well-known for their unique unpacking experience. Opening up a new ipod, iphone, ipad or mac computer is, literally, designed to be enjoyable. Their packaging, though maybe just typical now that everyone has seen it, was extremely unique at the time it was designed. Other tech-related packaging blended in on Best Buy's shelves without a solid information hierarchy.
I am certainly not a Microsoft basher myself, but being a designer, this video is pretty entertaining.


I am a total sucker when it comes to packaging. It could be the designer side of me that simply appreciates a beautiful box when I see it, and so I...subconsciously want to support this effort of cleaning up the ugly advertising? Maybe.

Would you buy this water?

I sure would.

media meditation one. wildfox

While I was stumbling around the internet, I decided to try and find what Nicole Fox was up to. Nicole Fox was the winner of cycle 13 of America's Next Top Model. Even though it might be self-damaging (watching pretty girls take prettier pictures), I absolutely love the show, and cycle 13 is my favorite so far, because it was only for short girls! 5' 7" and under to be exact.


Anyways, I found that the ANTM winner has a contract with Covergirl, is the face of Heritage 21 of Forever 21, and also is modeling for WildFox Couture. I had never heard of WildFox, but once I got to their page a video started playing and Nicole was in it!
It's a new thing designers and clothing companies are using for advertising...making videos that capture their newest collections.

This video is for the fall collection of WildFox Couture.

Wildfox Couture Fall 2010: It's Witchcraft from WILDFOX PR on Vimeo.

Isn't it neat?! The vague sexuality, and pseudo-innocence is wonderful. That last scene too...I laughed the first time, but it really is a bold statement. This video shows how advertising is still evolving. Fashion went from store fronts, to catalogues, to the catwalk, to online shopping and "lookbooks" (nice photography of models wearing the latest trends), and now a creative audio/visual experience. From word to image, this epistemological shift in fashion advertising is a strong step in gaining more customers. Images are more available to people than words...because I wanna SEE the clothing and see how they can be worn, not read about it. The video grabs my limbic brain with the song and the pacing where the movement is almost synced with the music...almost.

I totally get a sense of the Fall 2010 collection, and if it weren't for a college budget, I would definitely buy some pieces, because WildFox inspired me. I am a slave to my limbic brain...the right music and colors get me every time. Good advertising work right there.

a little about me...and my summer...and media...and my future.

Name is Jordan LaCount and I'm a junior here at Champlain, studying Graphic Design. I was born in Vermont and have lived here my...entire...life. Believe me it's exciting.

This summer I traveled to Italy with some classmates and professor Toni Lee to see the originals of many of the pieces we have been studying since high school. Staying in Florence, there was an overwhelming amount of media at all times. Signs, graffiti, ads playing on screens inside of shops....and in the piazzas (at ALL times of the day and night) there was live music, street performers, and entertainment. In some ways, it was a totally different experience than the U.S. media, while some means of advertising stayed the same. At times, it was much more elegant seeing the ads, because the text was in a foreign language, so one had to figure out what it was saying without actually understanding the words. Pretty interesting...


I really do not have a huge problem with the overwhelming abundance of media that socks me in the face every time I turn a corner...I love it. To me, there's just something so lovely about reading a sign or watching a commercial. The one thing that does get to me, though, are how hideous the random ads on most websites (facebook is my number one annoyance) make the webpage look. Aesthetically, some ads just destroy all the work a designer put into making a site look tight. My dream would be to clean up the advertising filth on the web..... I might sound way to harsh or critical, but I guess I take it quite personally as a designer...we come and go to school and get 100k in debt in student loans...we're educated to do this stuff right. So hire us to do it right. :]

I plan on either going to grad school right after Champlain or doing Teach For America for two years and then grad school. In grad school I want to either specialize in marketing/communication, or become a user interface/experience analyst. I want to go beyond design on so many levels and get to the big picture of media and advertising.
I want to go here!