Assignment 1A

This assignment involved us having to read chapter 4 of the book, The Culture of Design by Guy Julier. This I have to admit is one of the annoying books I have ever read, I don't mean this as though it is not a good book as it raises a lot of good points, but feel that it is just so hard to take in, it took a few attempts re-reading the same chapter over and over before it even started to sink in. So many apologies in case this is a bit of a rant and doesn't make any sense as I have tried to understand it the best that I could.

So on chapter 4 the consumption of design. There were a few theories in this that I found very interesting but one that caught my eye the most and made more sense to me and this was the section Passive or Sovereign Consumers? This was a section that was all about the manipulation of branding and consumer demand, companies try to give their own products an edge so that consumers will stay within that brand when upgrading, this allows the steady sale of products keeping the company at high profits and ahead of it competitors within the same range of products.

This relates to designers in advertising and I can relate to this as well as a student as it would be my job to help promote the products, it is a designers job to increase product demand as well as keep sales steady. By doing this would require proper promotion of the products that have the typical trademark of the company. This would be done through t.v advertising, and also within a products packaging, this itself would also need to have the quality that the company has kept with in the past allowing consumers to keep the trust they have with them and recognize anything they produce if and whenever an item is upgraded.

The manipulation theory sort of explains that advertising helps brand loyalty so that consumers buy within the range of products produced by the same manufacturer, but if it is done in the wrong way people would abandon this current brand and choose another more reliable manufacture who has a reliable quality of products. This is known as a 'brand ladder'.

The writer also states that at the opposite end of the manipulation theory is the notion of 'consumer sovereignty' which basically flips the theory around and that companies must meet the standards of the consumer rather than the consumer meeting the standards of the product. What the consumer doesn't like the consumer will not buy, so there is a high demand for companies in a designer to keep up to date and ahead of others to produce something the consumer expects from the company. J.K. Galbraith is basically saying that over producing is creating a service that is not required and has nothing to do with the product through advertising.