How symbols and brands shape our humanity
2,326,450 views |
Debbie Millman |
TEDWomen 2019
• December 2019
"Branding is the profound manifestation of the human spirit," says designer and podcaster Debbie Millman. In a historical odyssey that she illustrated herself, Millman traces the evolution of branding, from cave paintings to flags to beer labels and beyond. She explores the power of symbols to unite people, beginning with prehistoric communities who used them to represent beliefs and identify affiliations to modern companies that adopt logos and trademarks to market their products -- and explains how branding reflects the state of humanity.
"Branding is the profound manifestation of the human spirit," says designer and podcaster Debbie Millman. In a historical odyssey that she illustrated herself, Millman traces the evolution of branding, from cave paintings to flags to beer labels and beyond. She explores the power of symbols to unite people, beginning with prehistoric communities who used them to represent beliefs and identify affiliations to modern companies that adopt logos and trademarks to market their products -- and explains how branding reflects the state of humanity.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
About the speaker
As host of the long-running podcast "Design Matters," Debbie Millman illuminates the creative processes of some of our era's most intriguing artists, designers and icons. She is the founder and chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon | Vintage, 2001 | Book
We are now surrounded by a world of activity that can't be seen. The patterns produced by the splash of a raindrop happen too fast for our eyes to catch. Is it possible we could direct our brains to see more? The authors of A General Theory of Love, written in 2001, write this: "The scientist and artist both speak to the turmoil that comes from having a triune brain. A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing, or to love the right person, or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because of the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded. Our society's love affair with mechanical devices that respond at a button-touch does not prepare us to deal with the unruly organic mind that dwells within. Anything that does not comply must be broken or poorly designed." Our neocortical brain has the ability to organize and convey logic and reason. The limbic brain inspires and can involuntarily feel love. Yet, according to Lewis, "The verbal rendition of emotional material demands a difficult transmutation ... Poetry, a bridge between the neocortical and limbic brains, is simultaneously improbable and powerful." A General Theory of Love is a book about human love in all its forms and is written with in a brilliant, poetry inspired narrative.
William Gibson | G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003 | Book
In this novel, William Gibson has one of his characters describe branding this way: "All truly viable advertising addresses the older, deeper mind, beyond language and logic. You 'know' in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but it is our culture that tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And (it) makes us buy things." Pattern Recognition is a novel written in 2002 — before Facebook and YouTube had launched — but somehow predicted the creation of both.
Marty Neumeyer | New Riders, 2005 | Book
Brands create intimate worlds inhabitants can understand, and where they can be somebody and feel as if they belong. I think Marty Neumeier states it best when he confides his thoughts about the tribes he belongs to in his book, The Brand Gap:
"We can belong to the Callaway club when we play golf, the Volkswagen tribe when we drive to work, the Williams Sonoma tribe when we cook a meal, the Nike club when we work-out." He goes on to say, "As a weekend athlete, my two nagging doubts are that I might be congenitally lazy, and that I might have little actual ability. But I am not really worried about my shoes. But when the Nike folks say, 'Just do it,' they're peering into my soul. I begin to feel that, if they understand me that well, their shoes are probably pretty good. I am then willing to join the tribe of Nike." But to see the world in brand tribes is to take possession of much more than just a theory of the world. It is to possess a theory of all the activity in it, perhaps an entire science, an ethology that could tell us everything we want to know about human behavior.
I think the way Neumeier describes brands is probably the one of the most poetic and forgiving of the place that products now have in our lives. The mammalian part of our brain is indeed the part of the brain that makes us want to be part of a tribe, and I do think that we buy the brands that make us feel part of that tribe in order to be able to participate in that tribe. But I think it goes deeper than that. We are buying brands and products to be part of a tribe because now, in the day and age and culture and world we are living in, we are otherwise tribeless. We feel tribeless and disconnected because, despite our technological connectedness, we are emotionally and physically further away from our friends and family than ever before in human history. We have now replaced our closeness with people with closeness with brands that, at best, can only represent that we are close to others. The Brand Gap was written in 2005 but is one of the first books to present a unified theory of brand-building.
"We can belong to the Callaway club when we play golf, the Volkswagen tribe when we drive to work, the Williams Sonoma tribe when we cook a meal, the Nike club when we work-out." He goes on to say, "As a weekend athlete, my two nagging doubts are that I might be congenitally lazy, and that I might have little actual ability. But I am not really worried about my shoes. But when the Nike folks say, 'Just do it,' they're peering into my soul. I begin to feel that, if they understand me that well, their shoes are probably pretty good. I am then willing to join the tribe of Nike." But to see the world in brand tribes is to take possession of much more than just a theory of the world. It is to possess a theory of all the activity in it, perhaps an entire science, an ethology that could tell us everything we want to know about human behavior.
I think the way Neumeier describes brands is probably the one of the most poetic and forgiving of the place that products now have in our lives. The mammalian part of our brain is indeed the part of the brain that makes us want to be part of a tribe, and I do think that we buy the brands that make us feel part of that tribe in order to be able to participate in that tribe. But I think it goes deeper than that. We are buying brands and products to be part of a tribe because now, in the day and age and culture and world we are living in, we are otherwise tribeless. We feel tribeless and disconnected because, despite our technological connectedness, we are emotionally and physically further away from our friends and family than ever before in human history. We have now replaced our closeness with people with closeness with brands that, at best, can only represent that we are close to others. The Brand Gap was written in 2005 but is one of the first books to present a unified theory of brand-building.
Steven Heller | Allworth, 2019 | Book
This brilliant book tracks the swastika from its historical origins into the present day. The swastika holds a special fascination for graphic designers who work with trademarks and logos all the time: it is one of the most visually powerful symbols ever devised. No other mark — not even variations of the cross or, for that matter, the Nike swoosh — are as graphically potent. But the symbol itself was once the mark of good fortune. It gets its name from the Sanskrit word svastika, meaning "well-being, good fortune and luck" and actually refers to the Indian mystic figure svastikaya. It was found among India's first civilized remains, as early as 2500 BC. It was even carved into The Foot of Buddha, a sacred Buddhist stone carving. Prior to its transfiguration, it served as religious phylactery, occult talisman, scientific symbol, guild emblem, meteorological implement, commercial trademark, architectural ornament, printing fleuron and military insignia. This books insightfully reveals how a graphic symbol is as weak or as strong as what it represents, and as a tool of corporate or product identification, a trademark or logo is neither inherently good nor; rather, its end use determines how it is perceived.
Co-written and directed by H5: François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain | Produced by Autour de Minuit
H5, Addict, Mikros Images and Arcadi, 2009 | Watch
Logorama is a 2009 Academy Award-winning animated short film told entirely through the use of 2,000 contemporary and historical logos and mascots. H5 members explained, "Logorama presents us with an over-marketed world built only from logos and real trademarks that are destroyed by a series of natural disasters (including an earthquake and a tidal wave of oil). Logotypes are used to describe an alarming universe (similar to the one that we are living in) with all the graphic signs that accompany us ... in our lives. The film reveals the victory of the creative against the rational, where nature and human fantasy triumph."
Directed by Sophie Barthes, 2007 | Watch
This 11-minute movie reveals what happens if happiness was for sale. What would we do if we could buy it? How would that change our lives?
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This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.