The relationship between production and consumption has been changing. Traditional methods of value creation have given way to a process where social interaction and communication, are mediated and transformed into economic value via The Brand. Branding has not just been an intruder of our culture, it hijacked it completely and using a methodology of communication that is being policed by the branding system itself, created a circular system that keeps it running. The garbage language that modern-day media feed us almost every minute of every day is set out to bully diversity, to reduce and homogenize. It is so generic and limited in scope, it could so easily be mistaken for a parody. This language contains terms such as “diversity”, “extreme”, and “disruption”, that advertise difference, yet achieves the exact opposite.

In the current realm, what happens in the world of advertising seems to me to be quite counter-intuitive. In the world of “cafe normal” design, the products of the advertising agencies only ascertain the homogeneity and call-to-lack-of-action issued by the corporations, seemingly motivated by ideas of originality and creativity. I enjoyed burying myself in the text of Jason Grant and Oliver Vodeb[1], which really swiftly ridicules the enterprises of those companies.

I see contemporary visual communication and branding as an art form that has the most impact on our lives personally (personal branding, individual expression), politically, economically, and in a lot of other aspects. It is distressing to see how the aforementioned topic is either extremely overlooked or purposefully disregarded in design education. The apparent enemy of art teaching methodologies, which art schools swivel away from and avoid, such as marketing and branding, with its artistic potential, is the territory that needs to be explored in a wider scope, for us to be proficient in the contemporary state of graphic design. The scope to which this system affects us as graphic designers, but also as people, and the possibilities that it gives for creative expression and activism, remain uninvestigated in the classroom.