NEIRO ‘ C R E A T I N G A B R A N D I N S P I R E D B Y J A P A N E S E C U LT U R E AS A WESTERN GRAPHIC DESIGNER’
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CONTENTS
CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION
FIELD OF STUDY
コンテンツ
HISTORY FOCUS
CASE STUDY
LITERARY REVIEW
CONCLUSION
PERSONAL REFLECTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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ネ イ ロ
Neiro “Tone of sound”
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I N T R O D U C T I O N / イントロダクション 0004
ME AS A CREATIVE
Hello, my name is Nicolai Bye. Yes, that is my actual last name. As a visual activist, I am constantly fascinated by the world around me. From posters and movies, to the smallest of details. I see design and creativity as fun activities and therefore, they should be approached that way. I mostly work digitally, but I love sketching, test printing and, sometimes, even getting my hands dirty with some good old paint.
Because of this, I love listening to upbeat music when I work alone, and work in groups for great feedback and brainstorming. My biggest inspiration for design, are mostly culture and architecture. Traveling the world and having the opportunity to see all the amazing places that exists, really stimulates and inspires me, and I would love this to be visible in my designs.
In this research book, I will be taking you through my latest project, branding a music festival. More accurately a Japanese themed music festival aimed at both the western and eastern audience. We will be looking into the research conducted, experiences explored, literary interpreted and lastly the conclusion aka the brief I created for my project.
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FIELD OF STUDY // 研究分野 0006
MUSIC FESTIVALS “Companies were formed to specifically transform a traditional festival into a memorable themed experience. Music alone would not be enough to compete with top festivals.” - Malu Marzarotto For my project, I have chosen to take a deeper dive into the world of music festivals. Since I wanted to create a brand identity for my own music festival I understand its crucial to investigate the current market for it and to learn more about its origin. When investigating music festivals today they can be briefly described as an experience for young adults, with a focus on music performances and usually accompanied by installations. The reason we today have these installations like art, food, technology etc. is to further fuel the attendees’ experience and to make them want to come back year after year. Today the music festival scene is highly competitive and individual brands are in a constant tug of war to
stand out from the mass. This is why we have a broad selection of festivals often differentiating from each other by music genre, but also to the extent they are able to immerse the visitors. An example I have experienced myself is ‘Tomorrowland’. Tomorrowland have gone up and beyond to make your experience feel like you have entered paradise (as long as you can afford it). With everything from alternative rentable cabins to gourmet restaurants that you need to book in advance to have a seat. Even the ticket itself comes in a crafted box fitting of that year’s theme. While Tomorrowland focuses on a global interest for its crowd we still see success of smaller festivals
such as Don’t Let Daddy Know in Amsterdam which mainly is intended for the local community. This goes to show that today there is a festival for anyone who might want to attend one, either close by or in another country.
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HISTORY //
THE PAST
ヒストリー
As part of my research into the current environment of music festivals, I also looked into the history of music festivals, where they came from. This made me come over an article written by Malu Marzarotto, co-founder of design studio Marcd. While the modern-day word ‘festival’ first made its ways in the English language around the middle of the 16th century from the word ‘feast’, there are traces of festivals all the way back to ancient Greek. The first evidence of musical performances in relation to an event goes back to the Pythian Games sometime in the 6th century.
To not make this section to long I’ll list some notable festivals that carved the path to today’s festival scene. The First Annual American Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, took place in 1952, but it wasn’t until 1967 the Monterey Pop Festival started to take into account the experience of a festival, creating a feeling of having to be there as stated originally by an article by Everfest. Following this, we had the first festival with over 1 000 000 people attending at Milwaukee’s Summerfest in 1969. Marzarotto says in her article that the moment when corporates started realising the financial possibilities with
festivals started with Woodstock in 1969. Up until now, festivals didn’t look anything like they do today, but from the end of the 1980s to now we would see the exponential growth of rave culture and its effect on the festival scene.
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FOCUS // フォーカス 0010
BRANDING “Graphic design can be conservative, self-referential and recipe-driven. We do everything we can to avoid this.” - Tony Brook For my focus, I will be talking about arguably the biggest part of my project, branding. To quickly run through what a brand or a brand identity is, it’s everything from a companies logo to packaging, their website to leaflets, everything created by the same company having a unifying voice that gets recognized by their audience. A brand will always be interpreted differently by the audience then your original vision, but by getting a great understanding of your audience and appealing to them through your identity you can lessen this difference between your intended message and the received message.
As Brooks says in his earlier quote, brands today are becoming more and more alike with the digital age, ‘a recipe-driven’ practice if you will. They strive to stand out and have a unique feel to themselves more than ever as minimalism is getting favoured for easier use on screen-based mediums. A way we can see festivals are fighting this is in their brand identity. By looking at some of the most recognised festivals in the world they share one thing in common, they all create their own worlds within the festivals, be it in a massive stadium or a huge piece of land. Festivals like Defqon.1,
Burning man and Tomorrowland takes you on a journey to a new world making your trip all the more memorable, making as much as possible of the festivals grounds and online presence share a unifying voice.
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CASE S
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TUDIES
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CASE STUDY // ケーススタディ 0014
TOMORROWLAND “Live Today, Love Tomorrow, Unite Forever”
Tomorrowland is an electronic music festival held in Boom, Belgium. It started in 2005 with 9,000 visitors, and now has expanded to become one of the world’s largest and most well-known festivals with over 400,000 visitors over 2 weekends.
everywhere. Transporting you to a fantasy land that exist outside of the normal world.
Things to take away from Tomorrowland: Ticket arriving with “relic” Grand detailed stages Brand as much as possible A positive attitude and focus on sustainable solutions Every year the tickets are sold out Tons of great food options in the matter of minutes, and after being there yourself it’s easy to understand why. Tomorrowland is the perfect example of what a music festival that spared no change would look like. From the moment you arrive at the festival you are taken away by the festivals branding almost
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FIG. 9
CASE STUDY
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ケーススタディ
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CASE STUDY // ケーススタディ 0018
SNOWATTACK “YOU’LL BE UP ALL WEEK!”
Snowattack is a ski resort winter music festival that takes place in Les Orres, France. The festival has been held for 13 years with MasterCard as their main sponsor. The festival itself is ran by a Hungarian company leading to the main audience for the festival being from Hungary.
He later explains how he would never go to the festival for the music but sees the music festival as a bonus to a week of skiing.
Things to take away from Snowattack: 7 days to long for just music festival Location making it hard for The festival itself is seen as a English speakers cheaper festival with not many Think about ways to create a known names for an international smoother experience for audience. The festival focuses a people traveling alone lot of its energy on day events and Keep the festival cashless the ski resort part of the festival. According to Tamas Bakos, a visitor for his second time, the festival is rather cheap for a weeks’ worth of ski pass and stay.
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Tamas Bakos Friend made at festival.
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CASE STUDY
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ケーススタディ
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CASE STUDY
DLDK “Don’t Let Daddy Know”
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Don’t Let Daddy Know is a quickly growing festival going from a beach party in Ibiza in 2012, to now be one of the biggest international EDM festivals. Over a few years, DLDK has spread to eighteen countries. The outpost I attended in Amsterdam opened in 2018. DLDK is amongst the sub-brands of an event organizer company going by E&A Events. A true rave experience would be the perfect summary of this onenight festival. Giant led panels lighting up an entire arena, with music so loud it shakes you to the core. My experience of DLDK was most likely skewed as I had just finished a very long trip before getting there. Despite this and being on my own, the festival was
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enjoyable. It felt like because this was a one-night festival that the location was less polished. Where Tomorrowland had thought about all details down to the colour of their grass, DLDK seemed more interested in caring predominantly about the mainstage while the food stands were simple pop up stands. Things to take away from DLDK: Festival felt rushed The incredible light show created more interest Having customised currency is better than cash, but still inferior to cashless Location far away from the travel options
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CASE STUDY
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ケーススタディ
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LITERARY
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Y REVIEW
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LITERARY REVIEW // 文献レビュ 0028
EXPERIENCE ECONOMY “...your experience will never be worth an admission fee until you explore how to stop giving it away for free” - Gilmore & Pine For a project about music festivals, it is essential to look into the very core for the commercialisation of the events, experience economy. Following the principles of the experience economy, we can see that the younger generation values memories more then they value tangible items; “although experiences themselves lack tangibility, people greatly desire them because the value of experiences lies within them, where it remains long afterwards” (Gilmore & Pine, 2011). This tendency facilitated the success of the concept of the experience economy, the practice throughout a company doesn’t just sell a
product to its customers but also sells an experience, which is able to generate memories in them. These memories could be created through the interaction with the staff, the possibility to shop in their private store and.
while in 2019 the ticket came accompanied with its own fantasy storybook.
For my own project, it is important to always reconsider how can I take my design and make it interactable. How can I create Using Tomorrowland again as our a memorable experience for my example, we have a very cut clear audience upon discovering and experience in their ticket. The way learning about my project? they have approached the ticket design is to create a mini-event around simply opening it. A couple of examples of this is with the 2018 ticket featuring a star map where you could use the box itself to discover a hidden message,
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LITERARY REVIEW // 文献レビュ 0030
ORIENTALISM “A Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” - Edward W. Said As described by Edward W. Said, Orientalism talks of how Eastern culture has been alienated, allowing western dominance over what is defined as the norm. This sheds some light on the challenges of working on a project with Japanese-culture as a western graphic designer. Therefore I’ve decided to do more research on this topic to prevent any orientalist thinking. Wester Wagenaar in his paper ‘Wacky Japan: A new face of orientalism’ has written about the different types of Orientalism. They are Orientalism in the Traditional-, Techno- and his newer term Wacky- Orientalism.
To quickly summarize the orientalisms; Traditional orientalism is depictions of temple, ninjas, geisha, kimono etc. Techno-orientalism is the depiction of the Japanese people being soulless machines working under an authority with no real emotions. Lastly wackyorientalism covers the modern form of orientalist thinking seen in memes like “because Japan” and “WTF Japan”, depicting them as weird people we don’t associate with. When I started thinking about my project I originally had planned aesthetics heavily leaning into traditional orientalism, but upon
learning about the subject I changed it to “celebrate their technology”, which in turn fed into techno-orientalism. Instead of changing my idea once again I took this as a challenge and used techno-orientalism as a guide for what to avoid as I pursued a technological aesthetic.
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LITERARY REVIEW // 文献レビュ 0032
COLOUR THEORY “...colors used in branding influence consumers’ perception, are used to identify products, and carry meaning that’s evolved into a relationship between the brand and the consumer.” - Meagan K. Cunningham Colour theory or more accurately colour psychology looks into the emotional connotations humans have when being presented colours. Through several studies its shown that from a young age humans learns to associate colours with certain objects and emotions. Because of this and further investigation into proper use of colour in branding it has been undeniable that proper use of colour design have had financial benefits for companies. As Meagan K. Cunningham writes in her article ‘The Value of Color Research in Brand Strategy’ there’s been corporations willing to pay millions of dollars for their colour palette and go to
with depictions of dystopian landscapes of the future or of dark alleyways in the night. Humans were depicted as robots and or in chimeras esq cyborgs. This is all because of the While many of us can enjoy the importance of an emotional neon colours and holographic connection with the audience elements often used together and a brand. What makes this with cybernetics, the tone of voice challenging is “Contrary to lettered logos, tag lines and other is very dark and unfit to what I was trying to communicate in components used in branding, my design. Yet to be truthful, color, including its hue and I still enjoyed the aesthetics of saturation, is perceived and technology depicted this way, translated by the brain, but instead of depicting it in a without context.” dystopic harsh cruel world, I rather For my project, I began with some wished to show off the technology in association with warmth and online research into cyberpunk more utopian; something that and vapor wave aesthetics; which search results came back echoes a warm sunset. legal actions against anyone threatening their brand’s trademark colour.
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CONCLUSION // まとめ 0034
THE BRIEF “...create a brand and visual identity for a new electronic dance music (EDM) festival with a Japanese theme that is aimed at young adults both in the West and East, creating an interest for both backgrounds.” The brief I created for the project was to create a brand and visual identity for a new electronic dance music (EDM) festival with a Japanese theme that is aimed at young adults both in the West and East, creating an interest for both backgrounds. This direction for the project spawned from my interest in both music festivals and pre-existing interest in Japanese culture. Armed with the knowledge from the previous pages of this research book I was aware of the challenges that I would have to face in a creative way both in terms of culture appropriation and the highly
competitive market of music festivals. Other reasons why this project would be suitable as my FMP would be that I recognized that making work for a music festival would be great because they require a variety of graphic and visual elements, allowing me to produce a portfolio of work. A big contributor for my decision about making the brand for a music festival was due to the amount of graphic and visual elements I would be able to work with which I later could add in my portfolio. In addition to this, after learning about the long and
tedious miss representation of Japanese culture I was driven to create an event where I could shed some light on a culture the West is not familiar with.
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FESTIVAL
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P E R S O N A L R E F. // リフレクション 0036
REFLECTION “...create an enjoyable experience both for the western and eastern audience”
To summarize our journey, in the beginning of the project I was driven by personal interest in music festivals and Japanese culture. Originally my project was heading towards a style that would feed into TraditionalOrientalism, but thanks to some research and new knowledge I was able to navigate better around this subject. Then I arrived at techno-orientalism but instead of deferring from it, I’ve decided to subvert it and to challenge and expand on the idea of technological associations with Japan without dehumanizing its people.
festival is to create an enjoyable experience both for the western and eastern audience. For a bigger chance at succeeding with this task I chose to collaborate with Japanese students from UCA which resulted in the festival’s name and colour profile. While for my FMP the main components is the brand itself and how effective it is, I have many plans for how the rest of the festival would come to life which I hope to be able to expand on after our deadline.
LO1 My rationale behind my research is my personal interest in branding and my plans of having this at my core for my professional practice. To further enrich my outcomes I took the extra step to engage with While also being interested in introducing the West to the festivals as part of my research to get a better understanding of eastern culture. the importance of the experience. This is due to the goal of the
LO2 For my research I’ve chosen to immerse myself in festivals to get a better understanding of the importance of experience and how to apply this to my own festival. I also did extensive research in my Critical Reflection on Orientalism to understand the history of eastern representation in the West, and to increase my chances of succeeding, I worked with Japanese students to get a better understanding of their culture.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY Armitage, John & Roberts, Joanne (2016) “Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media.” Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press.
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Cunningham, Meagan K. 2017. “The Value of Color Rosen, Steven L. 2000. “JAPAN AS OTHER: Research in Brand Strategy.” Open Journal of Social Orientalism and Cultural Conflict.” https://www. immi.se/intercultural/nr4/rosen.htm. Sciences 05 (12): 186–96. Accessed April 9, 2020. Gilmore, James & Pine, Joseph (2011) “The Said, Edward W. 1979. “Orientalism.” New York : Experience Economy.” Boston, Mass. : Vintage Books https://monoskop.org/images/4/4e/ Harvard Business. Said_Edward_Orientalism_1979.pdf. Accessed April 9, 2020. Hinton, Patrick. 2017. “A History of Rave in Dance Music Documentaries.” Mixmag. https://mixmag. Smithson, Elizabeth, Joy Corkery, Allen Adamson, net/feature/a-history-of-rave-in-dance-musicIvan Gurkov, Marc Cloosterman, Andrew Witkin, documentaries/15. Accessed May 5, 2020. and Noah Lekas. 2020. “What Is Branding And Why Is It Important For Your Business? | HistoryExtra. 2019. “From Ancient Greece to Brandingmag.” Brandingmag. https://www. Glastonbury: A Brief History of Music Festivals.” brandingmag.com/2015/10/14/what-is-brandinghttps://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/ and-why-is-it-important-for-your-business/. history-music-festivals-woodstock-glastonburyAccessed May 5, 2020. first/. Accessed May 5, 2020.
参考文献
Kim, Moses. 2017. “Brand Identity - Shakuro Writes - Medium,” September. https://medium.com/ shakuro/brand-identity-b6fbeddd4919. Accessed May 7, 2020. Marion. 2017. “What Is Branding? – The Branding Journal.” https://www.thebrandingjournal. com/2015/10/what-is-branding-definition/. Accessed May 15, 2020. Marzarotto, Malu. 2018. “The Evolution of Music Festivals and the Power of an Experience,” https:// medium.com/@malu_14611/the-evolution-ofmusic-festivals-and-the-power-of-an-experiencef98be2b9a5c1. Accessed May 5, 2020.
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Richardson, Nicholas J. 2015. “Pythian Games.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics. Oxford University Press.
Spotify. 2020. “Branding Guidelines | Spotify for Developers.” https://developer.spotify.com/ branding-guidelines/. Accessed May 15, 2020. The Washington Post. 2017. “Perspective,” https:// www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/ wp/2017/04/17/are-there-too-many-musicfestivals/. Accessed May 5, 2020.
Wagenaar, Wester. 2016. “Wacky Japan: A new face of orientalism.” Copenhagen: Nordi Institute of Asian Studies. http:// asiainfocus.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ wacky-japan.pdf?fbclid=IwAR19Ww6acTx_ It9v36OLbIYHiVylvmj4Z3zEIV6SAdprx4DZAv U4d_gCvgA. Accessed April 9, 2020.
Fig. 7 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2019. “Tomorrowland overview.” Photography, collage. In possession of: Bye, N.A. Farnham.
Fig. 17 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2019. “Festival ticket for Tomorrowland.” Photography, landscape. In possession of: Bye, N.A. Farnham.
Fig. 8 - Tomorrowland. 2020. “Tomorrowland logo.” Fig. 18 - Travel. 2020. “Japanese gate with a boat.” Photography, portrait. https://2o.nivuu.com/travelGraphic, logo. In possession of: Tomorrowland. photos-videos-japan-3053/ Accessed 15 May, 2020. Fig. 9 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2019. “Collage from Tomorrowland.” Photography, collage. In possession List of illustrations Fig. 19 - Ting, Johnson. 2014. “Neo Japan 2202.” of: Bye, N.A. Farnham. Illustration, portrait. https://www.artstation.com/ Fig. 1 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2019. “Collage from artwork/K18x. Accessed 15 May, 2020. Tomorrowland.” Photography, collage. In possession Fig. 10 - Snowattack. 2020. “Snowattack logo.” Graphic, Logo. In possession of: Snowattack. of: Bye, N.A. Farnham. Fig. 20 - WTF. 2020. “How to make a turtle human.” Photography, portrait. https://9gag.com/ Fig. 11 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2020. “Portrait of Tamas Fig. 2 - Wolf, Daniel/The Boston Globe. 1969. gag/avox7xX/wtf-japan. Accessed 15 May, 2020. Bakos.” Photography, portrait. In possession of: “Woodstock festival.” Photography, landscape. Bye, N.A. Farnham. https://www.biography.com/news/woodstockFig. 21 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2020. “Graphics from 1969-performers. Accessed May 13, 2020. NEIRO brand.” Graphics, various. In possession of: Fig. 12 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2020. “Collage from Bye, N.A. Farnham. Snowattack.” Photography, collage. In possession Fig. 3 - Defqon.1. 2020. “Defqon.1 festival stage.” of: Bye, N.A. Farnham. Photography, landscape. https://www.q-dance. Fig. 22 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2020. “Classroom during com/en/events/defqon-1/defqon-1-weekendpresentation.” Photography, landscape. Fig. 13 - DLDK. 2020. “Don’t Let Daddy Know festival-2020/info. Accessed May 15, 2020. logo.” Graphic, logo. In possession of: E&A Events. In possession of: Bye, N.A. Farnham. Fig. 4 - Wyatt, Andrew. 2020. “Burning Man Fig. 14 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2020. “Festival location for festival.” Photography, landscape. DLDK.” Photography, landscape. In possession of: In possession of: burningman.org. Bye, N.A. Farnham. Fig. 5 - Tomorrowland. 2019. “Tomorrowland mainstage.” Photography, landscape. https://www. Fig. 15 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2020. “Collage from DLDK.” Photography, collage. In possession of: tomorrowland.com/en/festival/welcome. Bye, N.A. Farnham. Accessed May 15, 2020. Fig. 16 - PavelChered. 2018. “Screenshot from Fig. 6 - Bye, Nicolai A. 2019. “Tomorrowland Mainstage.” Photography, collage. In possession of: unboxing video.” Photography, screenshot. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBIZxSImMak. Bye, N.A. Farnham. Accessed 15 May, 2020.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.