I was accepted to THE MASTERS OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES IN BRANDING at the School of Visual Arts: Fall 2010. Below: The Statement of Intent.
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A Brown Girl's Perspective on a Colorful Brand Experience
It was in college that I realized I wasn't white. The summer of 2001 I left the security and comfort of my suburban lifestyle in Upstate New York. Driving down the New York State Thruway two hundred miles to New York City, I knew that my life was about to begin: I was off to college! Promises of freedom, friends, and new experiences awaited me. What I wasn't in store for was a journey of personal and cultural identity.
Navigating the streets of Brooklyn came easy to me. Navigating the culture was a different story. I remember the day I was invited to a potluck dinner for a sorority interest group and had signed up to bring a side dish. Not sure what to bring, I emailed one of the girls. She immediately emailed me back and it simply said: rice and beans. I remember thinking what an odd combination but dismissed it and quickly ran out to get the ingredients. The grocery store on Myrtle Ave was a bit intimidating. It was much different than grocery stores upstate. For one, it was much smaller and had many unfamiliar brands. Knowing what I had to get, I figured it would be an easy trip. I quickly grabbed the familiar orange box with the friendly picture of Uncle Ben. Then, I hunted down the bold red can of Campbell's pork and beans. I checked out and walked back to my dorm. When I got back to my room I fished out the blue Tupperware my mom had crammed into my closet and made everything in the school-supplied microwave. Armed with my hot side dishes I walked out to face my first cultural turning point.
One makes many assumptions about objects, brands, and people in seconds. Understanding the world around us is incredibly complex and we are constantly looking to make personal connections. A lot of times our most basic assumptions come out of our need to feel comfortable. We walk into a room and look for commonality; we figure if someone looks like us, dresses like us, acts like us, they will understand us. The ever-changing landscape of the world's racial profile makes the color of our skin much less important in the quest to find personal connection. This is how and why the notion of brands is so powerful. Branding is the art of forming an identity. When I went to my potluck dinner, I learned that rice and beans are in fact not two separate side dishes. I also learned that the basic assumption about my ethnicity indicated I would know and be familiar with traditional Hispanic culture. However, the brands I am familiar with and the ones I identify with are not traditional Hispanic brands. This does not make me any less brown, but it does make for a very colorful brand experience and very memorable stories.
The evolution of my cultural identity has helped me to understand branding as an experience. Finding out my race, gender and income won't tell you much about my personal identity. Knowing the brands that I buy into and what I consume everyday will give you a more authentic picture of who I am. The 21st century is moving quickly as cultures, ethnicities and societies merge making the power of brands and the influence of branding ever more instrumental in shaping and framing identity and guiding personal experience.
The power of appearance and the influence of my personal experience have led me into the realm of communication design. I am fascinated by the act of creating a message and then crafting a design solution to communicate an idea. I have been looking for a way to combine my creative abilities, passion for visual language, and strong communication skills. The Masters of Professional Studies in Branding would be the perfect fit for my professional background and personal history. I am looking to this program to provide me with a unique skill set that will allow me to understand how culture, creativity and strategy interact to influence design and promote business goals. I believe that this program will provide me with a sustainable foundation that will be of substantial benefit as I grow my career in communication design.