PhotoShop ‘till you brand & drop

This week we were introduced to the concept of 'self-branding', involving the self-conscious construction of a meta-narrative and meta-image of self through the use of cultural meanings and images drawn from the narrative and visual codes of the mainstream culture industries (Hearn 2008, p. 198). An example of the reflexive project of the ‘ self’ within the online space is how, as Hearn notes, websites such as 2night.com and universityparty.ca improvise on the theme of self-branding by taking photographs of young people at clubs and linking them to advertisements online, blurring the distinction between private self and instrumental associative object.

We also experimented with PhotoShop, a professional image editing software package enabling amateurs and experts alike to modify colours and effects, crop, collage, play with gradients and layer organic images.

This combination of theoretical discussion and technical practice got me thinking about the ways in which contemporary user-friendly software like Photoshop might play a role in the practice and

production of ‘branded’ personae within the online retail microcosm. The e-stores for Aussie labels Zimmermann and Peter Alexander immediately sprang to mind; both comprise clear, sharp and well illuminated clothing catalogues, vivid photographs and moving fashion spreads that deflect the two-dimensional actuality of the computer screen and bring the garments to life for the browsing customer.

Both sites use a complex of significations – highly stylized colour schemes, pattern, photography, composition, logos, models’ body language, text, etc. - to ‘brand’ their product, positioning themselves as sites for the extraction of value (Hearn 2008, p. 201).

In creating and developing our website feature, we ourselves will inevitably become involved in this process of self-branding. Producing a site that advocates that what matters is not ‘meaning’ or ‘truth’ or ‘reason’, but ‘winning’ (by keeping up with the Joneses and going online NOW), the feature’s purpose is fundamentally persuasive, urging retailers to re-produce their products for competitive-circulation. In some sense, then, we are instructing our retailer audience to 're-brand' themselves, to generate their own rhetorically persuasive packaging against an online backdrop.

With self-branding now a hallmark of modernity, it's food for thought to consider that, as online media students, we become a part of the complex processes that we are striving to deconstruct.