Week 6 // Visual Identity

During week 6, the topic of discussion was visual identity. The reading, “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger focuses on the aspects of publicity and how it affects the visual identity and success of designs. 

Throughout the text Berger refers to the ‘spectator-buyer’ and the ‘spectator-owner’. I found that these terms weren't exactly explained , and I had to form my own ideas on them, so I am still unsure after researching what exactly these terms means. Berger states, ‘The spectator buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the products into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself’ (John Berger) , the reference makes me believe that the spectator buyer is referring to the audience of the publicity or the customer of the product. I am still unsure of what the term spectator-owner is, even though it is referenced to many times within the text. My main idea around it is that the spectator-owner would be the person/company creating these publicity images. 

Within Berger’s research of publicity he explores the impact of works of art and how they have become an authority over publicity. Personally, I think a work of art is able to lend allure or authority to these publicity images due to the already perceived hight of success that they endure. They can act as guidance and inspiration , but also be used within publicity to heighten the recognisability for the audience. Berger further describes this idea through the use of oil paintings and how ‘the continuity between oil paintings and publicity goes far deeper than the ‘quoting of specific paintings. Publicity relies to a very large extent on the language of oil painting. It speaks in the same voice about the same things.’  

Berger states that ‘colour photography is to the spectator-buyer what oil paint was to the spectator-owner’ , with my confusion about the specifics of spectator buyers and owners my ideas upon this statement are limited. This statement to me reflects that spectator-buyers inhibit more modern behaviours, and also that they are able to represent the values of the spectator-owners in a similar way, almost like the real thing. The relationship between photography and oil paintings is similar. 

Respond to : “Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred. How then does publicity remain credible - or credible enough to exert the influence it does ? It remains credible because the truthfulness of publicity is judged, no by the real fulfilment of its promises, hut by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyer”  

Within this reference from the text Berger explains the impact of publicity and how it interacts with the world its placed in. Publicity is always aiming to please and convince an audience of a specific idea. In most cases these ideas can be problems or enhancements which can be fixed in the future, because of this, publicity usually always aims to out do that of its past. ‘Publicity speaks in the future tense’ because this is an easy way to attract attention of audiences who seek to move forward in their lives and also for the suspect-buyers to ‘imagine herself transformed by the products’. Publicity is able to remain credible because of this stigma that has been created for individuals to constantly be out performing/ out doing each other, the easiest way for this to be done is through materialistic values of new products and ideas which could enhance the individual in the future.