Brand Design: Identity and Cultural Mediation

Abstract

Generally, the brand raises a double problem of value: its own identity, generator of a myth, as a tale of its origins, supporting the deep axiology of its discourses; and its cultural background, that is, its universe of reference shaped by the genuine perception and concepts of a specific population. My thinking focuses on value management through brand design. The brand Shiseido, born in Japan just before The Meiji Era, managed to develop a new approach of the cosmetics market and reinforce its mythic existence with an original graphic identity. We can observe the transition from a cultural oriented communication, highlighting traditional Japanese beauty – to a remediation via the meeting with the Occident, ‘another’ woman, another beauty – allowing the brand to recreate its expression. I am looking for traces of Shiseido's identity background in its culture, that is, the Place where the establishment of invariants relies on canonical discourses and on the process of re-invention itself, a dynamic process encompassing a relation with space-time and multiple operations of translation allowing innovation and the transmission of values. I propose to analyse a corpus of images where Shiseido uses an intercultural blended discourse. The transcultural strategy of the brand builds its myth through a social discourse analysable by semiotics; this ‘game’ of rhetoric regulated by the expression plane allows the brand to resolve heterogeneities and create mediations between contradictory elements emerging from cultural hybridization and the use of new forms.

Keywords:

• semiotics
• brand design
• innovation
• culture
• Japan

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ludovic Chatenet

Ludovic Chatenet is a PhD student in semiotics working on cultural dynamics and transformation through alterity (otherness) in visual representations. He is also interested in design and the signification of objects when involved with identity building.