Truly Deeply/Madly

In life you often meet peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate about what they do, but it is far more excit­ing to find some­one who is com­pletely obses­sive. The beau­ti­fully colour sen­si­tive instal­la­tions of Swedish sculp­tor Michael Johans­son are such an illustration.

“I am fas­ci­nated walk­ing around flea mar­kets find­ing dou­bles of seem­ingly unique, though often use­less objects I have already pur­chased at another flea mar­ket. Despite the fact that
I did not have any use for them even the first time, the desire to own two of these objects becomes too strong to resist. The unique and unknown ori­gin of the object increases my desire to want the dou­ble. This com­bi­na­tion of the now-familiar and the new-unknown are among the var­i­ous fac­tors that come together to cre­ate the irre­sistable pull of these objects.”

Intrigued by every­day objects Johans­son removes them from their famil­iar mean­ing and use, repack­ag­ing them into 3D Tetris-like sculp­tures high­light­ing the objects coin­ci­den­tal mean­ings
of shape and colour. On the sur­face these colour­ful sculp­tures appear to be play­ful and
uncom­pli­cated but there is some­thing more seri­ous hid­ing beneath. It is the jux­ta­po­si­tion
of social cri­tique and humour that is Johansson’s forte.

In terms of brand­ing, colour can instantly dif­fer­en­ti­ate a com­pany or prod­uct from com­peti­tors and strengthen brand pres­ence within their mar­ket. Brands can also intro­duce colour into a new con­text, by choos­ing a colour that pre­vi­ously no-one else has used in their mar­ket, pro­vid­ing a unique and own­able brand prop­erty to lever­age across mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties and brand touch points. It was con­sid­ered a big risk when Pepsi changed its pack­ag­ing from red to blue in 1998 to dis­tin­guish their brand from their main com­peti­tor. More than a decade later I doubt many peo­ple can remem­ber that Pepsi’s pack­ag­ing used to be pre­dom­i­nantly red.

If you’d like to talk to some peo­ple who spend way too much of their life eat­ing, sleep­ing, and think­ing about colour give us a call.

Cas­san­dra Gill, Design Director.

Tags: Brand, Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand differentiation, Colour, Colour Wheel, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne, Melbourne Brand Strategy, Pepsi, Sculpture

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 11:59 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Creative, Graphic Design Melbourne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.