My opinion is that branding specialists who want to build a seamless visual identity, have to assume not only that their work is to achieve a synthesis, but also that their resources act as a team. In this case, their main job is to make the team to be effective and coordinated.

In other words, I see brand design as to the job carried on by many football coaches, when they claim that teams should be assembled back to front, from the defence towards the front. I think the same happen with brands: You should start working from the defence. Then you have to build a tough and flexible midfield, one that can allow you to project a structured attack, solid, incisive and backed.

Why this complication? Because if you start to design a brand from the logo, then you can score an isolated goal, but being more than likely to loose the match by a landslide.

How can you build this scheme? Forget for a while about logos, colours, typefaces and illustrations and then let start to build the brand from behind.

The first step is to define the objectives to be achieved by our team. In this case, the meaning of winning is to reach a certain positioning into the map of meanings of the viewer. In other words, that means spectators will classify our brand, placing it in the best box for us of their mind.

This start requires a sincere agreement between parties by accepting all realities, expectations and responsibilities; otherwise the following step will never make sense.

With this search written in the skin, the second part of the process is to clearly define the recipient of our goal, to whom our message will be directed. That requires us to take notice about our opponent. For that reason, we will have to cut a portion of all humanity to stay only with a single segment, with a particular piece of the pie. This part will be a particular social group with which we will deal, forgetting for the moment all others. As result, the world has shrunk; the adversary begins to have a face and a form. There is only one rival. Now we can analyze him, see its strengths and weaknesses, needs and previous reactions. Now we must investigate him as deeply as it is possible. We must know and understand how and why he reacts as he does.

Third step, we must create an action strategy that allows us to begin to organize our job, based on gaining tangible things to our opponent. Accordingly, we should create a strategy that achieves the confusion of our adversary, looking us to be those who arrive first at the goal. Thus, we must have many clear things like: what attributes, buying habits, social behaviour, prejudices, ideas, norms, values and beliefs are we eager to change through our actions?

Fourth step, we must begin to interpret our strategy by thinking about the tactical actions. These are the concrete facts that will dispute over the space of our adversary. In this manner, even though one can be hired only to design a brand, for doing so, we must imagine and outline the whole further communication related to our brand, such as raw information, insights, and arguments. But we must go further: we must find the slogans and stories that we can use for affecting the other party.

As part of this work, we must be extremely coldly realistic and think about how we will move forward: therefore, we need to recognize our firepower, our real resources. For example, knowing what means, advertising and media may be used by us if it is appropriate. Also, what system of production, logistics and distribution can we use? From there, we can shape our midfield. That is because if we try to overcome high walls with weak legs and little air, the result can be catastrophic.

As a fifth step, we must manage these resources so to sound like an orchestra. That is a totality where each player takes its own place in the field, where pictures, colours, letters, symbols and levels of abstraction are organized as an ideal whole, to sound good together and to be ready for playing the best game. Hence, we have to work on the team dynamics, on the rhythm and visual hierarchies of the message so as to be as a battering ram. A striker represented by a word, image, colour or any combination thereof. A striker created for doing the best for drilling the opposing defence. This battering ram is the brand. Now we have to use of poetry, of all our art for interpreting our strategy and team tactics.

Conclusion: My position is that brand design requires the prior execution of a process based on: imagine, understand, interpret and media planning. In addition, I believe that is essential to have a real sense of the available resources that we will command and therefore to count with them. Also, we must have in mind about all of the related messages that can be built. After all of that, we can focus our job on the image creation: working on the symbolic features that will make the brand be visible. Consequently, if a clear strategy and defined tactics are materializing in our brand, we have the DNA of the company into the visual identity and we can then play the game beforehand. That’s the kind of brand that wins games.

© Sebastian Guerrini, 2012

That representation, that brand which contains the identity, must contain something so valuable that it will speak in name of someone or something; it must transmit something that differentiates values and customizes its messenger. Hence, in a world in which people are known more through representations than in person, these become an essential part of our identity.

Designing identity: Designing visual identity is projecting an image that represents the something, that is to say, which publicly substitutes it, occupying the role of narrator of the identity.

The existence of a narration or an identity script is necessary for the image to have that role. To find such a script, it is necessary to submerge ourselves in the memories, stories and realities of our client. With that knowledge, to then plan a synthesis that conceptually marks their limits, a synthesis that will imprint the genetics of the image policy.

Finally, that script must be made tangible, which is why it requires material infrastructure that allows the image to stand by itself and to be presented in the social setting of the organization’s life. It is here where, as a consequence of the graphic interpretation, metaphors of myths, narration of sense, origin and articulation of differences, all of them take visual form. In other words, the visual identity will come to life.

Branding issues: The mixture between image and identity could be thought of as related to brand issues. Branding is important for current social life, for business, for collective identities and for men and women’s souls. It allows people to identify, organize, classify, embody and make sense of the world.

Issues on branding are issues about identity or, more precisely, about identification, which can be understood, in a psychoanalytical sense, as the transformation that takes place when someone or something assumes an image. The identifying process with images is dynamic, because it is always joining social images to personal ones, taking the entity of just some of them and rejecting the rest of the existing images. This selection is constantly questioning or reinforcing the way the observers see their own identity by forcing the beholders to explain themselves in their positions, in their differential belonging with other images considered to be as themselves, with other conclusions, other stories, discourses and collective identifications. It is within this struggle among images – as Foucault states it – that the image’s design becomes powerful when entering the domain of other discourses.

Why does this work? An anthropological answer would be that nothing socially exists until it is represented. In that way, representation might well be part of the resources that make any social bond alive, making visible and tangible any membership or relationship. On the other hand, people, organizations, companies or objects need image to perform the dynamic process of leading their closure of structuring totalities for having their individualization.

But if identification is related to images…what is an image? An image is an intentional cut-out of the world surrounding us, which reaches the status of an entity in itself. That entity can be powerful and imposing because it carries meaning in a sudden way to those who see it and this is achieved by means of two qualities of visual media. First, its parts act as words that articulate representations like information in the way of a text. Second, the strength that arises by the construction of that instantaneous, synthetic, organic and organized discursive completely confuses the perceptions in the spectator, naturalizing or presenting an assembly of fragments as some meaningful reality.

Thus, identification can be understood as the embodiment with images of object discourses, something pertaining to corporate branding, and the visual embodiment of ideological discourses, something pertaining to the institutional or political branding. Both are part of human resources to structure and make sense out of all components of reality.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2012

Both on the identity of a person as in the one of a company, organization or institution, the identity can be considered as the relationship that each entity maintains only with itself. If we follow this scheme, we can think that all of these identities are not products of nature but an act of self-assertion. That means they come from a natural phenomenon rather than from a mental one.

Under this framework, we can find a parallelism and a difference in the action of two disciplines that work with identities, such as psychoanalysis and brand design, the design of visual identities.

This parallelism is related to the act that both of them are reading underneath discourses and then, at the right time, they apply a surgical technique called punctuation. Nevertheless, their difference lies on the objective of this punctuation.

The psychoanalyst

The Psychoanalysis (analysis of the soul or mind), is among other things a method that reveals the way in which a person gives meaning to his or her world and the way such person imagines the reality.

In that way and for Lacan, the identity of a person is something evanescent that can not be located in one tangible and stony element. That is because for him, the identity is based on both absences and presences, in differences and similarities, the positive together with the negative of the person.

This relativity that Lacan asserts, explains why for instance a man seeks to hang on to something solid to close the sense of what he believes he is, of what he wants to be and of what he thinks others want him to be. So, to achieve such security is why each person constructs and clings to a story, his or her story. A story that decides what part of reality is the own one.

Therefore, and if that story does not give happiness enough, the analyst acts over the discourse the patient’s has taken as proper. The specialist then searches for the hidden essence of the identity, which is the way the patient see and be seen, the way that subjectivity has been structured.

However, subjectivity can be found when the person talks about his history and only for a while. It’s those unexpected moments when the repressions produced by conventions or social inhibitions fail to control the spontaneous expressions of the speaker.

Such attempts are lapses, jokes or the pretention to hide something. But these moments are comparables with a shell when is opened, where the soft flesh inside the subject is helpless, leaving feelings and imaginations of the person visible.

What does the analyst do then? He interrupts or repeats what was said, by cutting the patient’s speech, making a punctuation that stops the accelerated motion, linear, scattered or repeated line of the story, pausing thus the continuum of the person’s narration and creating an instant.

Why? Because the opening is the moment where the patient can recognise and visualize its inner tissue. That is because the compulsive usual address of the patient discourse was successfully cut, returning to him its message and allowing the subject to start seeing other things around, as its context or its way of thinking, as well as detecting the things of that story.

In other words, the punctuation makes a slit in the belly of what is said, allowing to free the new interpretations of the consciousness. Thus, the happy punctuation is the one which gives sense to the discourse of the subject and authorizes the person to reach new conclusions. These are conclusions that can help to process images that disturbed him and from there to start building a better image of himself, so as to anticipate a better future.

The Brand Designer

The branding (brand design) is among other things the visual representation of an entity, such as an institution, organization or company.

The identity of an entity is as evanescent as the one of an individual and accordingly there are no fixed points that can define it.

Such identity is based on three overlapping dimensions that can distance and get closer arbitrarily. These dimensions are: what the entity in question is, within quantifiable and measurable terms. What the entity wants to be: their hopes, dreams and expectations. Finally, aspects required by others: people as buyers, members or significant people for it.

This arbitrariness requires to the entity to have an anchor point for materialize and articulate its better moment. That is a point that set and structures strategically these dimensions, offering finally a solid identity and sense to the entity.

Otherwise, the body can be lost in the compulsive search for any particular dimension of its existence. For example, if the being just wants what people supposedly expected from, it may lose support and balance, exposing the entity in danger of collapse.

But that moment of strategic anchoring can only be displayed to each and every viewer if it can embody and attach  meaning to something recognizable. Something that can stop open interpretations about the identity of the entity, something as a mark or symbol. This happens because the brand cuts an image, one that makes us to see a key moment in the continuum of time. That is a moment running in a certain place and situation, where characters and objects dramatize an abstract or realistic scene. An scene that identify now the entity.

In practice and in face of the spectators, the brand image produces a fusion of the symbolic with the real and tangible entity in question. Mixing as in a melting pot what it is interpreted about both parties: the material value with the metaphorical one, the social utility of an organization with the social fantasies and desires awakened by the image. The happy result of this mixture is when the desired positioning of the entity is visible.

The similarity

As we have seen, a moment in the life of an identity is crystallized by the punctuation. Thus, on the one hand we may think that such moment can make a person or entity to rethink about their identity.

The difference

On the other hand, it can also be seen that the purpose, objective and underlying ideology between the two disciplines differ: the punctuation of the psychoanalyst seeks to not leave any mark, while the one of the designer, yes.

By using the punctuation, the analyst is trying therapeutically to release the identity, looking for helping the patient to find its way, even though freedom is not always a guarantee of happiness.

Conversely, the designer’s cut seeks to close the identity of the entity, in order to help to define, differentiate and hold it on to something tangible, visible and unique, according to a supposed interest. In this way, this cut is intentional: pretends that the identity is what it represents. At the same time, the designer is trying to dramatize scenes and stories by projecting a desired future for the beholders, in which the plot is based on the entity interest.

Is it wrong what designers do?

In defence of designers, we can find the need of society to cling to certainties. As an example we can see how parents are “designing” their newborn baby by means of choosing a certain name, or the need of every person to belong to a collective identity to define his or her identity.

Conclusion

We have seen that some of the working methods of both disciplines and resources are similar. However, we have also found that the ultimate goal of both is different, since one intends to open and the other to close the representation of the identity. However, we can conclude that both are necessary for the social life of identities.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

The identity of the project had to transmit and explain the insight of the proposal, that is about the opportunity to refurbish and upgrade Spanish home as an engine to activate the local economy. The role of the created picture is to summarize the transformation process that is proposed.

Thus, in the act of anticipation that the elector experiences, projects that link the person to his society and his representatives will be presented.
In their structure, the campaigns have two key instances: the construction of the social signification of the electoral proposals and the struggle for the agenda of debate that is settled during the election.

In the first case, the social role that the candidate has for his electorate is worked on; such a role seeking to be a reference of efficiency, coherent with certain rules or being the pertinent representative for a specific context.

In its dynamics of a campaign, as opposed to the logic of products, what is important is the result of the rhythm and not of a sum of isolated moments, since at the moment of the election that rhythm is the one that will set the solidity of the candidate’s representation in the elector’s world.

Finally, a political campaign is a meeting with the collective sense, that is to say, the interpretation of reality and social hope in this way results in roads that are built for the candidates as well as for the electorate.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

However, visual messages are currently affected by three cultural changes and therefore they have to meet new challenges and demands, especially those messages connected to identities, like brands.

The first of these changes is related with the saturation of images that new media are producing, receiving spectators an overloading of visual information. The second one is akin to the lack of personal contact with the object, cases in where clients have no tactile or material relationship with the product, because it is seen on a screen first.

The last one is the competition between brand and movement: brands are now competing with messages in motion: videos and animation that are invading all life spaces, and we all know that attention is catches by movement.

One consequence of that is the alteration of the traditional duties of brands and advertising, as a corollary of the transformation that is undergoing on traditional advertising.

About that, and even though there were many exceptions, we can remember that most entities were represented by neutral and inexpressive signs. Those brands had the main mission of naming the sender, instead of telling something proper about the essence of the entity. In this scheme, advertising was then the responsible of defining its identities, dropping attributes, emotions and feelings to this empty container that those brands were. Let think about what would have been of the Marlboro’s brand without cowboys nor car-racers.

But advertising changed: publicity is fighting now in an alternative scenario. It is working on broadcasting messages into segmented media, producing ephemeral, viral and dynamic images, rather of dominating the mass audience agenda. Advertising is now playing in confined spaces, obsessed by the pursuit of the short term profitability. In these circumstances, just perfumes and luxury car’s campaigns seem to be safe.

One results of this phenomenon is that today’s brands have to occupy part of the former spaces of advertising. That is because brands have nowadays to be the guardians of the differential values of companies and organizations, and they have to do it explicitly. For that reason, visual brands have to narrate stories, dramatises features and portraying the DNA of such entities. Therefore, and despite its limitations, visual brands have to inform, to explain and to seduce. Thus, this new responsibility affects the structure of visual identities because they have also to persuade and talk as the leading figure to the big audience. Not only being a seal of guarantee of the company, but also a protagonist of its meaning. In addition, and in many situations, the visual identity has to be able to talk and to be decoded by people from different cultures, by people who speak different languages, and doing so by telling silent stories and ideas. That is, by explaining their arguments beyond spoken languages, just by using images. In other words, brands must now revolve around iconic forms and colours to express characters, circumstances, atmospheres, locations and situations onto the story of the entity. As a balance, brands now have to be clever ideograms that trigger in its audience the accurate representation of the company or organization strategy.

On the other hand, and about the dispute for the beholder’s attention, animations and videos are forcing visual identities to be converted in something new than a static mark, something flexible in order to distinguished and survive in this world in motion.

Hence, a visual brand has to do what it can: it has to achieve the power of mutating, of transforming itself without loosing what it is: it has to be always different but always the same. That is the second challenges of brands: to be alive.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

My creation was quite risky in terms of what is expected in these kinds of politically correct contests. But I was convinced that the association of the entry of Hong Kong to the figure of lips, to a beautiful mouth, would be good for Hong Kong.

That is because it would attract the public attention and would achieve a redefinition of the current image of the city, allowing the city and port makes a nod toward the world. A nod that can be interpreted like a city willing to invite travellers, showing  itself warm and fun.

In this sense, I believe that as a city brand, Hong Kong requires of these attributes in the international arena, to go beyond of other competitive cities and ports like Shanghai, Dalian, etc. In addition, to show a certain freedom in the way of showing its personality, because this would help to position Victoria Harbour as unique.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

The following essay seeks to yield another reading of the topic of identification of origin – an issue that is currently a matter of discussion all over the world- by taking it further than the economic sphere.

Firstly, and in relation to the title of this article: what is the difference between a country and a nation? From an etymological point of view, it might simply be a debate concerning form, where the neutral idea of countries as cartographic spaces inhabited by certain people or groups of people is separated from the concept of a nation, the latter being one’s own place of birth or adoption.

However, this slight difference is what relates the idea of nation with feelings of belonging and of a common sense, recalling learned stories and constructed stories together with individual ways of seeing and feeling collectively. It is from that difference that identity can be re-thought.

Brands of Origin

It is well known that the present context in which countries are immersed makes every nation give symbolic visibility and clarification to the exchange contents they offer, enabling them to successfully interact within the global scenario. The symbolic value of the representation of origin, then, becomes part of the strategic resources of national economies and policies. The productive sectors, the tourism supply, the investment incentives and the credibility of domestic policy within the international scenario articulate themselves in the same cause.

Who needs to have a brand?

Thus, those who have the legitimate need to internationally validate the positive aspects of the origin of their production and supply may initially be found among the ones who want to find a brand of reference. Businessmen from the export trade and the tourist services are commonly detected within this group, since it is both fair and understandable that they foster the issue as seekers of new markets and horizons.

Furthermore, the national public sectors feel the logical political and operational need to join efforts and resources in order to frame the private sector and the social, political and economical organisations within an appropriate policy projected by all of their members. Besides, the Nation States have the legitimate right to be the spokespeople of the national interest inside and outside the boundaries of the country. Government also needs branding.

But, in another respect, since there is no identity without material references, the national idea or the idea of the nation setting will be comprised of both the natural and cultural aspects of each country in only one representation; it will comprise multiple collective identities in a single representation, and reflect some elements of contact between them. In other words, that representation might well be seen as part of the resources that make the social bond linking all the members of any nation at a certain moment in history become visible.

Going deeper, if collective identity is understood as being intermingled discourses that are assumed as belonging to each of us, and if individual identity is taken as a set of identifications, we are likely to find that those discourses that people identify with are the ones that structure their identities in general terms, and their national identity in this particular case.

Consequently, no matter what the causes that give rise to the fiction guiding the national identity in each context are, and what the discourses emitted by the representatives are, it should be recognized that this collective identity affects the parameters of the individual identity of those citizens inhabiting that nation at the present moment as well as the matrix where the new generations will develop. Just see the nationalisation mechanics exerted by images at school in nations as distant from each other as England, China or Uruguay to try to understand this process. Consequently, present and future citizens will also need brands.

What brands, images and discourses and what identities?

The relation between image and identity can be thought of as a dynamic process that leads to the closure or structuring of totalities such as people’s, organisations’, companies’, or objects’ identities. It is an automatic process of confrontation between the images that start to be taken as one’s own, and the rest of the existing images, identities and concepts. It constitutes a dynamic struggle that is not naive at all, and which unveils ideas, values, beliefs and interests. It is within this struggle – and such as Foucault states it – that the image’s design or production becomes powerful when entering the domain of other discources.

It is within those discourses represented by the image where the synthetic form of one or more myths is activated; the myth being understood as the story or tale that is naturally believed to represent its bearer. In this case, the message offered by the country’s myth creates the expectation of a series of hypothetical answers to which the owner of the myth is awoken when a relation between them is established. As a matter of fact, myths spread information about what a country and its people can or cannot offer, and they make us decide whether or not to be on the defensive, depending on which country the person we are talking to comes from, like in this case when the reader is in front of something written by an Argentinian.

Consequently, the entity in charge of a nation’s image will suture a sense that will speak in the name of everybody, but always using a single voice. That entity will deliberately project myths from the image that is validated as a brand, from its metaphor, from the act of showing actions and choices, a presence or an absence, from the possible act of appealing to individuals as subjects of that reference. That voice will, in part, affect what the person – as long as he or she is defined as having that origin – will believe and value in his or her environment and in his or her relation with others, as an expanded identity.

Alternatives

In this sense, when speaking in the name of a nation, there would be different options. The country could be projected as a stage with no actors or actresses. This might involve simply having to be either the person in charge of maintenance of the theatre or the one who turns the lights on and off.

On the other hand, the country can be projected as a music box, always repeating the same dancing tune or depicting the same characters (Samba music or Tango, Mariachis or Cossacks). This might freeze history or a repetitive joke, implying a simple anchorage of the idea of a country into being just a reflex of historical stereotypes defined by the world as typical of the inhabitants of each region. Then, one can become the image of a mirror reflecting what the rest supposedly want or understand from us.

Furthermore, a country could also be projected from a company or from an economy sector. This would tie the country’s fortune to that business in particular. In fact, Finland’s image of a country has been associated with Nokia, with the consequent direct association that a crisis in the company (something likely happen to any company) would lead to a crisis in Finland. However, it would seem that brands and identities are not the only ideal suits to be worn at a party you have not been invited to. Because, as Kant said, existence is not a predicate.

Nevertheless, among other possibilities, you may want to try to define the idea of a Nation in relation to the topic, and then, like in all definitions, try and take sides. Particularly, one side is not to see the nation as a stony whole, but rather as a set of fragments and relations. The nation is thus defined as the articulation of ventures taken in their broadest sense – those taken as one’s own, along with those taken with consideration of expectations and shared realities. Markets change and products change, but the people inhabiting each and every spot of the Earth – no matter what names they have – basically remain in their places.

The Opportunity

We are, at present, facing the possibility of using the power of images for the nation’s projection. Meaning and sense can be set as objectives by diversifying or modifying myths, prejudices, exportable supply and the information about a nation, and by making the external (and internal) perception a topic to construct integrating views.

Positive self-awareness has to be fostered on the part of the citizens from all nations. That self-awareness should in itself stimulate collective reflection regarding what binds them together, what they want to be, and of what each citizen can do for the rest, without having to resort to any magical potions.

In terms of the material aspect of the matter, the resources the inhabitants have should not promote a single production sector or area in the nation, since it will be the citizens themselves who will principally spend money on the expansion of these brands as well as spread or use institutional merchandising or positive replication in the treatment they give each other.

Conclusion

To conclude, it can be thought that the challenge of constructing a brand of origin is bigger than what it may seem at first sight. It can consequently be found that branding not only concerns itself with certain businesses or the search for market niches, nor exclusively with foreign exchange requirements. It does not simply have to do with others but rather with the self; not only with the identity and the sense of community existence which every nation as a whole has in terms of defining its internal and external needs, but with the individual and collective dreams of the people.

It must be concluded that those who use images do not have the choice of silence. Representation can be inclusive or exclusive, but it will have to be something by action or by omission.

With all that in mind, it can be concluded that in order to reach the expected result, intelligence, strategy and expertise will be needed, as well as a significant commitment to the complex needs that intermingle in every particular idea of the nation.

© Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

That happened to me in a work I did for a winery. In this task, I proposed the construction of a symbol. An easily identified and located symbol, one that people of the city would talk about. So I suggested building a sculpture, in signal with the new corporate visual identity scheme had designed.

For my part, I needed to express myself by something material. Symbol’s design has its magic, but working with tangible objects gives me a unique energy. At that stage, I had just finished my dissertation and was the ideal time for me to build something corporeal, to fight with materials rather than with ideas.

Technically, I wanted to work with fibreglass. I never did it before and I was intrigued about what I could get out of it.

Work’s started: first I made a cardboard mock-up of about 35 cm. of the future sculpture of 3,5 meters high, which was approved by the client. Then I contacted a specialist on building and repairing of boats with fibre.

From him, I learned the logic of the material. In addition it was he who copied each bottle and that helped us throughout the process.

From his advice, we built along with my assistant Lucia Spain (photo) a wooden skeleton, lined with a fine plaque of wood and wire mesh in the curved parts. We cover the joints with fillings and then painted everything with several coats of enamel. That was the mother, who worked as a template. From that mould, 4 bottles were copied.

The four bottles were the same, they had no particular features. That allowed me to further humanize each of them, looking for enrich the whole group. In this way, each bottle was cut to a different height so that the visual rhythm of the group was the one that interested me. Then I worked the factions with mastic, trying to maintain certain coarseness in the final aspect, in order to disguise the coolness and the perfection of the fiberglass.

As soon as each bottle was ready, we started to apply to each bottle a different texture: the first was plain, the second with torn fabric, the third with strips of burlap and the fourth with rustic wire.

Having fixed these materials, we impregnated them with liquid resin to make impervious to the elements, and therefore to make the sculpture endure without complications for at least more than five years (as happened). Then the bottles were united and the whole set was bolted to a concrete block, that was built on the site. To avoid the impact of the wind, part of the interior of the structure was filled out with stones and sand, which allowed not suffer falls or cracks.

Finally the sculpture was painted with several coats of enamel. Spray was applied in some places to emphasize the uniqueness of each texture.

In parallel with the sculpture, we constructed a series of shelves for certain wines. These structures look like wooden barrels, which were humanized by cropping its silhouettes. The construction of the shelves was done by Esther Lamas.

As a balance, these artefacts, together with the local colour selection and the design of the traditional graphical elements, achieved the integration of each message of the winery into a coherent whole. On the other hand, this work allowed me to express myself freely. Something that at that time was important for me.

More pictures at: www.guerriniisland.com/gallery/messages-in-bottles/

Sebastian Guerrini

To achieve this, the NGO must reach out to their audience in search of two objectives: first, to propagate the values, ideas and beliefs that give meaning and entity to the organization. Second, it must ensure that its stakeholders feel involved and committed to the organization. Thus the NGO can attract stakeholders to contribute to their cause, through both direct and economic participation.

These objectives require that the image and communication of an NGO should look to draw attention publicly to the issue that the NGO itself embodies, or to interpret the problem, synthesizing the diagnostic of the situation, dangers and possible solutions of this issue. In addition, it must define and differentiate the NGO so that it is clearly understood to have a central role in the solution of the specific subject matter. This requires the image that conveys the identity of the organization to tell in some way a story that insinuates a cause and effect, a present and a possible future of the issue.

In this context, the brand of an NGO should operate not only as a symbol of identification, but also as a speech or visual slogan. This means that the brand must instantly convey and achieve an understanding of the agenda, place of action and social significance of the organization. The visual slogan will mark the field of work while at the same time will be sufficiently alluring to attract everyone connected to the issue.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011