Introduction > 1. Definitions - Draft V1
Title: Before you brand a place: making visual communication design that advances an inner-city neighborhood and its multiple identities.
Topic Statement: A place brand cannot serve all identities living in Price Hill; visual communication designers must make better contributions when working in an inner-city community.
***This writing is a work-in-progress. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments below.***
[Insert Problem Statement] Overuse of place branding in neighborhoods and the risk of displacement
[Insert Purpose] Identify alternative uses of the visual communication design that enhance the quality of life of the neighborhood.
Place branding is an increasingly popular approach to activating geographical locations large and small from nations to alleys (Cite Johan?). Collins describes place branding as activities that shape the perception of a place's quality of life and uniqueness (2021). I use this definition throughout my study. I am fascinated with the term quality of life and will address its meaning momentarily. In the meantime, it is worth unpacking the terms place and brand.
First off, what is a place? Punter describes a sense of place as combining meaning, forms, and activities (1991). Combining those three elements’ shapes nations, states, cities, neighborhoods, alleys, parks, parking spaces, and more. The meaning might take the form of a place's history; forms could be buildings, monuments, and signage; activities might be unique behaviors or events found in the place. In some ways, a place brand is equivalent to a sense of place, but with more strategy and management.
Jones, a brand strategist for the world-renown branding agency Wolf Olin's, describes a brand as "a set of ideas and feelings about a product or entity shaped by what the product says and does and recognized through a distinct style" (2019). Brands, in this sense, seek to differentiate themselves, often within a market. Ranchers once burned "brands" into the sides of cattle to distinguish their private property from their neighbors. One of the earliest commercial brands, or trademarks, is the Bass Beer red triangle. As more and more beers, likely using similar ingredients, popped up, Bass sought ways to create distinction in the market. In this way, brands require management and control (cite brand management definition?), often from top-down rather than bottom-up.
Places brand themselves for various reasons as well. Predominantly tourism (cite?) and scouring funding once supplied through the state (cite Harvey, Julier?). The I Love New York logo made by Milton Glaser in 1977 may be one of the first popular place brands. Though lesser-known, graphic designer Tibor Kalman's controversial work in the 1990s on the new Times Square in New York City is another example (Miller 2007). In both instances, the purpose was to change the perception of place, attract funding, and stimulate the economy.
It is worth noting that a brand differs from a visual identity. Brands focus on the immaterial, meaning the affective qualities of a product, service, or place (Arvidsson?). They spread stories or myths, which is incredibly useful when enticing your global audience to feel something about brown sugar water or utilitarian institutions like a bank. Brands also require hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people behaving "on brand." For instance, if you have one bad experience with an Apple customer service representative, your perception of the Apple brand will decrease.
On the other hand, a visual identity system is simply the colors, type, and form (mark or logo) representing a product, service, or place. A sign that says, "Welcome to Price Hill" or a shirt that says, "Price Hill Neighborhood Association" are examples of a visual identity. If the sign says something like "the creative capital of Cincinnati" or the shirt says, "where diversity thrives," it starts to fall into the category of a place brand. Instead of identifying the neighborhood, it begins to prescribe expectations and the behavior of residents. Put another way; brands focus on the ideal reality (a shoe will give you flight). Visual identities highlight the functional reality (a shoe is waterproof).
This contrast between functional and ideal brings me back to the term quality of life. Cella describes quality of life as measuring one's functional reality compared to their ideal reality (1994). In other words, it is relative to one's experience in life. Still, as we will discover later, it is worth unpacking a baseline quality of life, especially in a place, like a neighborhood. For instance, everyone should feel safe walking to the grocery store, library, or school. That should not be an ideal reality but a functional reality across the board.
Increasing quality of life sounds like Herbert Simon's definition of Design. Simon said that Design is an activity that moves people toward a preferred state (1996). It is also strikingly like Heskett's description of design bridging utility and significance (2005). Or Flusser's proposal that design bridges the scientific and the aesthetic (1999). With these ideas in mind, place branding puts the cart before the horse. It leaps to a preferred state without understanding the functional reality of a place's living constituents and their multiple identities. That is not to say that Design cannot enhance the quality of life of a place, however.
Both visual identity and brands involve visual communication designers like me. I define visual communication design as the arrangement of type, forms, and colors to communicate and hold information and ideas between groups and individuals. William's "expressions of design" helps add context to Visual Communication Design: "an act of aligning intention, materiality, form, and function in which anyone can participate; a professional practice; a set of procedures serving commercial objectives; and a method for advancing social innovation" (2019, 303) Manzini defines "social innovations as new ideas (products, services, and models) that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. In other words, they are innovations that are both good for society and enhance society's capacity to act" (2018, 11).
I do not consider place branding (or branding) as a form of social innovation under the definition above. Economic factors, historically private property, drive branding. Brands serve institutions, not constituents. In its contemporary form and manifestation as place branding, it leverages image and perception to "better" a place rather than address the immediate needs of existing residents. While a place brand may build social relations, they are prescriptive of participation, driven toward upper-middle-class consumption levels (cite). Visual communication design plays a role in both place branding and social innovation. It can visualize the fictive images of a place brand and enhance residents' capacity to act toward an ideal reality, a preferred state.
Finally, place brand architects and designers ignore the political ramifications of their work in the context of diverse identities. Hart et al. utilize a philosophical definition of identity. "A person has an 'identity' in the sense that the individual can make judgments about the future based upon his or her views concerning which qualities of self will persist over time." (Hart et al., 2011). One must ask then, for whom does the place brand serve? If not all residents, then there must be better ways for visual communication designers to make contributions when working with places. In the case of this study, an inner-city community in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Note: I will include a bibliography in a future draft.