In my first experiment, I am looking at the effect of the handmade design style. By means of a survey, I would like to look at brandings in the handmade style. I want to find out whether this ‘handmade’ aesthetic evokes certain associations and if so, which ones. Roughly speaking, which brands, and the associated brand values does the ‘handmade design style’ fit in with?
During my research last semester, I found out that the handmade/analogue style has strong associations with political movements. For example, there is a strong connection to zines – homemade magazines that spread a political counter-movement – where this style was used very dominantly. This also gave rise to the Craftivism movement, in which political messages were expressed through handcrafted designs. An after-effect of these political and ethical associations was the so-called ‘craftwashing’, where companies deliberately used a handmade aesthetic to fool consumers into thinking they were a particularly ethical company, that supports certain political views.
As these movements mainly took place in the 1990s and 2000s, I am interested in the after-effects of them. Are these associations still as strong or are there completely different ones now?
This is what I want to find out with my survey. I chose four brands that have some ethical and political associations, such as Oatly (environmentally conscious) and Stüssy (popular brand among subcultures, e.g. hip-hop, skater, punk scene). As well as brands without such a connection, like Fanta and Gucci. With all these brands, however, I have found branding that looks imperfect and handmade. In my survey, I would now like to ask my participants what values they associate with each of these brands and whether they think the handmade style fits in with these values.
I created my survey using Google Forms and sent it out to willing participants. Some of them are professional designers, some of them come from other fields. This way I want to make sure to get representative results.
https://forms.gle/PVzrHj8naLbDhCWE6
