It’s funny how a little time out can help you make connections between the past and present. Before I got into advertising, I worked in art education as a tour guide and curator. Over the now numerous lockdowns, I’ve been thinking about how the things I learned in those jobs influence the ways I think and work today in my advertising career.
Being tour guide is a lot like being in advertising, it’s all about storytelling. I always knew I’d hooked my audience – especially the notoriously difficult teenagers – once they started asking questions and wanting to know more about a particular artist or painting. Now I use this as guide for ad work. What is the story we’re telling, how interesting is it, and what will make people want to know more? When I was curating exhibitions, I started each project as I do now, pulling together references (sometimes the weirder the better!) and selecting the best creatives with whom I could put together something great.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought I should explore these connections a bit more. I decided to create a series of articles and new work that reflects on these connections. Here’s the first of the series >>
Signs and Symbols
2020 was the year I finally got health insurance. It only took a global pandemic and the spectre of my own mortality to do it, but here we are. When looking for providers I wasn’t sure what exactly I needed and being the ‘judge-a-book-by-it’s-cover-especially-if-it’s-nicely-illustrated’ kind of person, it was the ads that swung me to VHI.
I’ve always been a fan of how their ads look – 3D animated characters mixed with real life footage – but it’s the little details in the visual storytelling that really interest me. In one of their earlier ads, a character described their cancer diagnosis as ’a whirlwind’ as she steps onto a roundabout. In another, a character says he’s on the mend as he literally walks ‘out of the woods’. It’s the same with easter eggs in movies and TV shows - those little details a director adds that link you to something else you might have seen… Those details give you that ‘I understood that reference’ moment. I’m in on it.
These kind of signs and symbols are everywhere if you know what you’re looking for. I have always been interested in how they’re used in art. Before people were generally educated or could read and write, religious artwork like paintings and sculptures were used as tools of education (and also indoctrination, but that’s a different blog). People may not have known how to read, but they would have known how to ‘read’ a painting by the kinds symbols they saw in them.
Saints, for example, were all depicted with their own symbol – the equivalent to their own modern logo. St. Peter carries the keys to the gates of heaven, St. Michael is usually seen fighting a dragon, and my personal favourite, St Lucy carries her own eyes on a plate. Unfortunately, a lot of their symbols were based on how the person was martyred and many of them had multiple symbols, so I imagine it all got a bit confusing. A bit like a hasty re-brand where the website doesn’t match the stationery.
So, even though people are now (mainly) literate, these particular symbols have fallen out of public consciousness. I want to reintroduce them to modern audience, but since Christianity isn’t exactly in fashion, a brand partnership might be the way in. And all eyes are on my gal Lucy to lead the way. Like I said before, she’s usually the one with her peepers on a plate, but confusingly, she’ll usually also still have her actual eyes –the alternative is a bit too gruesome.
That makes her the perfect ambassador for the four-eyed among us. I have chosen her as the face of my new eyewear campaign. I’ve given a her a modern logo, keeping a religious element with the cross ‘t’ and incorporating a nod to her eyes. The type is influenced by renaissance paintings and illuminated texts, with dots or ‘eyes’ in the logo lettering and a serif secondary typeface. Her brand colours are influenced by how artists have represented her over the centuries, and her icons include eyes, palm leaves and arches. I also designed her glasses range with round shapes and modern materials, and of course some hipster ones with no glass at all. Wouldn’t mind a pair myself.
Speaking of which, I wonder if my health insurance covers eye tests…
