Mythologies - Roland Barthes

Mythologies is written in two sections. The first consists of a series of essays on myths and the use of the mythic language associated with a diverse range of images in popular culture. 

According to Barthes, myth is a form of signification. However myth is different from ordinary speech and language. Barthes follows de-Saussure's discussion regarding the nature of the linguistic signand he characterises myth a second class of signification. 

The second section of Roland Barthes' "Mythologies", titled "Myth Today", is a theoretical discussion of Barthes' program for myth analysis which is demonstrated in the first section of Mythologies. What Barthes terms as "myth" is in fact the manner in which a culture signifies and grants meaning to the world around it. According to Barthes, anything can be a myth, and he follows this approach throughout the examples in Mythologies.

Barthes' concept of myth seems similar or at least draws on the concept of ideology as formulated by Marx in The German Ideology. Ideology according to Barthes' version in "Myth Today" is not entirely concealed and is subject for scrutiny through its cultural manifestations. These manifestations, mythologies according to Barthes, present themselves as being "natural" and are therefore transparent. What Barthes is after in his analysis of mythologies is to reveal the ideological nature of culture's underling myth.

'Semiology has taught us that much has the task of giving an historical intentional a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal.'

Visual Methodologies

Visual research methods are growing more popular as people find them more helpful and easier to construct their texts or media. In this book, Gillian Rose shows that everyone sees the world through their own eyes and we interoperate by our life experiences. When looking at an image or text we think what does it mean to us? or what is it trying to show visually. 

Colour 
Colour is crucial part of an image structure
1. Hue - it is the reference to the actual colours in a painting.
2. Saturation - it refers to the purity of the colour.
3. Value - it refer to the lightness or darkness of a colour.

Light:
'The light you can see in an image is clearly related to both its colours and its detentions. What types of lights reflect in a painting: candlelight, daylight, electric light - these will clearly affect the structure and appearance of the image.

Expressive Content:
'That is the 'evocation' in writing of the 'feel' of an image. To describe an image's expressive content as 'the combined effect of subject matter and visual form.'

Mise-en-scene: 
'What the shot involves, looking at what frame is used, placement of actors/models and that how it is shot concerns the structure of the shots themselves.'

Montage:
'Montage refers to how the shots of a film are put together; that is, how they are presented.

Sound:
'Sound is crucial to most moving images, especially films, music videos, adverts and tv. There are three types of sound: environmental, speech and music. Environmental are sound effects, whether 'real' or artificial. The music soundtrack of a movie is also fundamental to its effect. The source of the sound can be in or out of the frame.'

Content Analysis:
is a technique for systematically describing written, spoken or visual communication. It provides a quantitative (numerical) description. Many content analyses involve media - print (newspapers, magazines), television, video, movies, the Internet.

Semiology:
'Semiology offers a very full box of analytical tools for taking an image apart and taking how it works in relation to the broader systems of meaning. Semiology draws upon the work of several major social theorists.

ART & COPY - Doug Pray

Art & Copy is a empowering film about advertising and inspiration, directed by Doug Pray. It reveals the inside scarcest and wisdom of the many great advertising creatives of this day an age. Creators that have changed our culture and media today but yet are still visually unknown. George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others featured in ART & COPY were responsible for "Just Do It," "I Love NY," "Where's the Beef?," "Got Milk," "Think Different," and brilliant campaigns for everything from cat food to cars. They got the attention of billions of people, inspired them, motivated them into either taking a stand, making a change or just buying a product. It is crazy to think how powerful an advertising campaign can be and its being creative by these amazing unknown people. 

In 1993 it started with two simple words "Got Milk?" Got Milk created by Rich Silverstein and Jeff Goodby revitalized the milk industry and made advertising history. Its "Got Milk?" marketing campaign not only helped turn around milk sales but also changed the face of consumer marketing forever. 

Sunlight Soap - Lever Brothers

Sunlight is a household brand of cleaning soap originally produced by the British company Lever Brothers in 1884. It was the world's first packaged, branded laundry soap, it was made for washing clothes and general household cleaning. The Lever Brothers was a British company founded in 1885 owned and run by brothers William Hesketh Lever and James Darcy Lever.

It started with a small food business by his father. William Lever and his brother James entered the soap business in 1885 by buying a small soap works in Warrington. The brothers joined forces with a chemist, William Hough Watson, who then became their business partner. Watson invented the new soap, using glycerin and vegetable oils such as palm oil, rather than tallow (animal fat). The resulting soap was a good, free-lathering soap, at first named Honey Soap after the yellowy/orange colour but then it was later changed to "Sunlight Soap". 

In 1971, the company rebranded its Sunlight washing-up liquid in the UK. The new packaging for Sunlight Lemon Liquid had a large picture of a lemon, and only featured the words "washing up liquid" in small letters. There were many complaints made by parents to company about how children will mistake the product for squash and drink it, this was a serious issue, it was even spoke of in the House of Lords. The company responded to these complaints by changing its packaging so it was more recognisable as washing up liquid.

M&S Archive

M&S Brief History and Advertising 

Marks and Spencer plc (also known as M&S) is a major British multinational retailer headquartered in the City of Westminster, London. It specialises in the selling of clothing, home products and luxury food products. M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. 

Over the years marks and spencer's had used their advertising to inspire and pull people in. in the last 10 year mark and spencer's has specialised their advertising on food and brushed clothing and other merchandise aside. Its been a decade sine the iconic "This is not just a chocolate pudding..." advert which sent pudding sales over the roof. The "Not just any food" campaign was most famous for the 2005 'pudding' ad, which featured a sultry voiceover from Dervla Kirwan, who extolled the virtues of a pudding with an extravagant melting centre. The famous line used was "this is not just a chocolate pudding, this is a Marks & Spencer chocolate pudding".

The new M&S food ad pays homage to the original with a reappearance of the oozing chocolate pudding, which has been given a modern 'jaffa' twist with a gooey orange centre.

Its soundtrack is an instrumental version of the pop hit 'Rather Be' by Clean Bandit.

This ad campaign was not as successful as the 2005 chocolate pudding ad but it did increase sales of pudding by 63% at the time of the ad campaign being realised.