Studio brief 2: Research task 1

Contextual research

Client/project background

The retailer was founded in 1964, first called 'Peter Robinson's Top Shop' as it was under the Sheffield branch of Peter Robinson. The first standing Topshop was opened in 1970 and Topman was also created that same year. Topshop specialises in clothing, shoes, accessories, and makeup. The company is part of the Arcadia Group, which owns high street clothing retailers like Dorothy Perkins, Evans and Miss Selfridge etc. 

Mission statement: 

"In everything we do, we strive for integrity, dialogue, transparency, excellence and innovation"

"cannot be defined by her age, but instead her attitude. Style conscious and independent, she is addicted to fashion but is not dedicated to. Instead she throws away the rulebook and aims for a unique look" - Topshop 2013

Size:

- 440 stores, with 319 in Britain

- across 37 countries

- online operations

- Oxford Circus is the largest

- 30,000 people visit each day to the Oxford Circus store

Business format: 

The company is always looking to expand internationally because of the success it has had in multiple countries so far. The company has collaborated with Kate Moss, who is reigniting her collection at Topshop. Her designs will increase the number of customers to Topshop. The company is also looking at opening stores in China, showing that the advertising campaigns that I am aiming to design will communicate worldwide as it is the design of it that hints at how the customer should feel when wearing the clothes. 

Advertising

I started by researching into how fashion companies actually aim to make you feel when wearing the clothes that they are selling. The research showed that the most commonly desired feeling expected is confidence, this is something that can easily be lost if the target audience is made to feel inadequate or too large to wear the particular items of clothing.

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows one of the Topshop adverts that caused the most problems for the company, as their choice in model was not reflective of the average body size of women in the UK and it triggered a lot of negative comments on social media. The company was forced to remove the controversial image of 'size zero' teenage model in response to an outcry from eating disorder groups as the image was thought to be acting as a trigger. Topshop replaced the image showing her to look healthier (figure 2) but many still believed that the clothing did not hide her small frame well enough.

Figure 2

This negative uproar in response to the advertising is bad for the customers and also Topshop as a brand. The advertising designing that I do will need to work in a way that will make the target audience feel assured that it is confidence that they will feel when purchasing and wearing the particular items of clothing, not inadequacy or that they are too large. This may be achieved with the visual presentation of the advertising campaigns, rather that the models that are selected to wear the clothing.  

I decided to look at existing advertising campaigns for Topshop so that common themes and styles could be identified. The idea to take away the focus from the model will be something completely new as figures 3 and 4 show just how important the presence of the model is when establishing an image for the brand. Figure 3 shows a strong use of colour in the advertising, but despite it being the most dominant feature I do not think it has as much impact as the model. The model wearing the clothing does not represent the average UK female body size, potentially causing large numbers of the audience to feel in adequate of as if they have to look a certain way to be able to suit the clothing that Topshop are selling. Figure 4 uses the environment in which the model is photographed to be in to portray the kind of 'vibe' that you would achieve by wearing the clothes. This works well to not only focus on the model as it is not a studio shoot, but without the model present the audience would not be able to have an understanding on what clothes or style Topshop is selling. 

Figure 3

Figure 4

Colour theory

Figure 5

The fine artist Wassily Kandinsky is a Russian painter who creates abstract work based heavily on colour theory and what the different uses of colours can portray. The Colour theory was published in 1911 and explained the effect on the eye that the painter's palette has (physical understanding) and the spiritual experience a viewer would experience (psychological effect).
The painting 'Fragment 2 for Composition VII, 1913' shows Kandinsky's belief that abstract colours and forms can be used to express the 'inner life' of the artist. He created a key which outlined what he believed each colour to represent, being:
Yellow - warm, cheeky, exciting, disturbing for people, attack, madness
Green - peace, stillness, passive, mix of yellow and blue
Blue - peaceful, supernatural, deep, lighter is more calming
Red - restless, glowing, alive, maturity
Light red - warm colour, expresses joy, energy, triumph
Middle red - stability, passion
Brown - dull, hard
Orange - radiant, serious healthy 
Violet - morbid, extinguished, sad
White - silence, possibilities, harmony
Black - extinguished, immovable, without future and hope, grief
Grey - balance between white and black, soundless, motionless, hopeless stillness

Colours are important in advertising as they can allow customers to begin to build up expectations about the company and what they would expect to receive. This understanding is based upon association to other products and services and also the way in which we have been exposed to colours and the ideas about what they may mean or represent. The survey by Joe Hallock shows what colour people commonly associate with particular words. The results were:
Trust: Most chose the colour blue (34%), followed by white (21%) and green (11%)
Security: Blue came out on top (28%), followed by black (16%) and green (12%)
Speed: Red was overwhelmingly the favourite (76%)
Cheapness: Orange came first (26%), followed by yellow (22%) and brown (13%)
High Quality: Black was the clear winner (43%), then blue (20%)
High Tech: This was almost evenly split, with black the top choice (26%) and blue and gray second (both 23%)
Reliability: Blue was the top choice (43%), followed by black (24%)
Courage: Most chose purple (29%), then red (28%), and finally blue (22%)
Fear/Terror: Red came in first (41%) followed by black (38%)
Fun: Orange was the top choice (28%), followed closely by yellow (26%) and then purple (17%)

All of this research into colour theory will help to inform the decisions in the design process when developing the concept for the Topshop advertising campaign which is based on the colours and how they make you feel. 

Social media

facebook

instagram 

In terms of social media, the images are very focused on the models wearing the clothes and less so on the actual products. The cover photo of the facebook page is a slim model wearing a dress, laying in a seductive position on the lawn. The idea of developing a visual that could represent the feelings that the products give to each person could work better as the cover photo and the visuals on the different social media accounts, taking away all of the focus from the models.