JKR

1. Back to the future – folksy graphics are a balm for a “disconnected society”.

For a long time many of us assumed that progress equalled better. But over the last hundred years or so our journey as consumers has taken us to a rather soulless place.

At the start of the twentieth century we bought our food from a grocer, who got it from a farmer. Dispensaries hand wrapped our barely branded lotions and potions in tissue paper. In central London, milk came from a cow stabled on your street. Where brands were emerging, they tended to proclaim the real people behind them – product evangelists like W K Kellogg, altruists like Lord Leverhulme, clever grocers such as H J Heinz. Such characters brought a sense of their human values to the brands that bore their names. But by centurys end we bought brands (made by somewhat anonymous corporations like Nestle or Proctor & Gamble) from out of town supermarkets, or online. Our shopping culture had become shrink-wrapped, portion-controlled and sterile. Ever more disconnected from the makers of our products, we consumers looked for other connections. For example with the “guys” at Ben and Jerry’s or Innocent. We knew such brands might only offer ersatz authenticity, but hey, at least they made us smile.

And it is perhaps no coincidence that it became fashionable to visually plunder the folksy “peace and love” graphics of the 60′s as our own times became somewhat troubled. There was a bitter irony in seeing Coke’s “love” poster on the side of a bus blown up on 7/11. In other words, in an increasingly disconnected and seemingly dangerous world, we wanted to forge a more emotional connection with the brands we consume.

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