2020.12.10 / Viewpoint

Sustainable Design and the Sustainability of Design

The market is full of goods for you to choose, in fact, they are not much different. You think you can choose freely, but often you just circle the answers set by others. Originally, I only wanted to buy a pair of jeans, but in the end, I didn't buy pants. Instead, I bought hats, coats, shoes and socks; You think that your pursuit of the most popular fashion trend is actually manipulated by trend companies and marketing companies!

In the movie “The Devil Wears Prada,” Meryl Streep, who takes on the role as head editor for a fashion magazine, states this in response to her assistants’ reference of clothing as “stuff.”

This “stuff”? Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you.

You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean.

You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic “casual corner” where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of “stuff.”

Is it the color trend predictions that first predict which color will be popular, or is it the designer who first creates the product? Are we creating trends or are trends shaping us? The more you think about this question, the harder it is to answer it.

Take the fashion industry for example. The industry has always been promoting its products according to the principle of "reciprocation". Brands and retailers will find the style that will appear in magazines and media reports; Designers hold fashion shows to give magazines exclusive information on latest trends, as well as free advertising. Designers will often send the latest design works to actors, musicians, celebrities and so on. Paparazzis will then shoot celebrities' clothes on various occasions, and fans and audiences will receive "trends" from the fashion industry.

The purpose of a brand is very simple. It is to let consumers access to products through a variety of media and influence them in many ways. The routine of the fashion industry is to make good use of the "mere exposure effect" confirmed by Robert Zajone's research. The more frequent the brand and product exposure, the higher the social acceptance, and the more people will buy, further improving its exposure and acceptance. Through this process, the release of trend predictors and designers will be confirmed, and the brand will become successful.

Every year, different organizations publish color trends, condense color suggestions into color cards, and give each color a story. Maybe it's not particularly attractive to everyone in the present. Color and story are both essential parts of packaging, necessary to be applied to packaging products and brands by designers. Due to the large amounts of data and technological progress, marketing is everywhere now. Consumers see trends occurring in objects such as cars, furniture and various types of products.

What influences our decision?

From the color of the product label to the product itself, everything can influence our preferences, shift our decision. Why? Do we not even know what we like?

In the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman explains the pattern of function within the brain. Someone’s verdict upon an object depends merely on whether they like it. Most of the time our decisions are based on instinct, emotional factors rather than rational thought. 

Illustrated by a well-known blind test for Coca Cola in the United States where subjects were asked to drink Coca Cola while a machine tracked the changes in brain nerve areas. Every cup they drank from would be filled with Coca Cola, but the experimenters would tell them some were and some were not. Half of the subjects were asked to look at the logo of Coca Cola before drinking, while the other half looked at a colored light. The results showed that even if people drank the same Coca Cola from the beginning to the end, 75% of the people who saw the Coca Cola pattern insisted that they preferred the flavor of the drink after seeing the pattern first; and people who look at the colored light had no obvious taste preference.

The experiment found that seeing the pattern of Coca Cola first increased the response of two brain regions (hippocampus and posterior prefrontal cortex), which were used when the brain mobilized past emotional experience. When the subjects drank the drink they liked, a part of the brain called ventromedial prefrontal cortex became more active, which is the positive reaction of the brain when people eat delicious food. 

In other words, what our brain is doing is “taste Branding!” After seeing the logo of Coca Cola, it influenced their emotions and therefore felt it to taste better. When people see the familiar red can, it stimulates a part of their brain, more so than the messages passed around throughout our taste buds. 

From its creation in 1885, Coca Cola has long been imprinted into the core of consumer and American culture. It is one of the few companies who realize that branding image is more important than product itself. In the past hundred years, they’ve spend billions of dollars to get their logo seen everywhere. Long being exposed to these stimuli, out brain is conditioned to feel positively when we see the logo. Therefore making the taste of Coca Cola even better, we neglect the fact that it’s merely sugar water with chemicals. And we see it to represent freedom, happiness, Christmas, everything wonderful.

Systematic design of brand experience is extremely important. A brand system with clear positioning and complete expression will greatly affect consumers' cognition of brand reputation and innovation. As we have mentioned, a good brand system is the result of the joint operation of products, technology, service, marketing and management, and not only the visual elements such as logo or packaging. The brand must continuously adjust and invest, project a consistent brand value, show experience, and form a good brand image in the hearts of users, which is absolutely necessary for marketing and growth.

The team of Working Images have always advocated the method of “Design thinking,” is to design the contact point between the brand and consumers needs. In general, the experience and emotional link to the brand will affect the subconsciousness of consumers and the marketing of brand products. If an enterprise can grasp the real needs of users through creative guidance of design, and can skillfully use the operation mode of the brain, there is a high probability that it can survive within the fierce market.

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