Gosh darnit, Mason, you said not to write about what I had for breakfast in my blog, and then you hinted that there’s always a possibility for that…and you know when you tell someone not to think of pink elephants, you think of pink elephants (but if you stare at them really hard and then look away, you’ll see green elephants).
So, before I headed off to work, I got out my Kashi cereal and started thinking about it. Kashi – the name represents organic goodness, pure healthy stuff. Their logo has some little berry thing on it, but it was some of their package design that stuck out to me. It also called upon my art undergard, that good art isn’t defined merely by liking it… And such it was with those Kashi Good Friends ceral boxes. I’m not sure if they’re still out there (I get the jumbo boxes of Kashi at Costco now), but they had pictures of ordinary people, their faces blown up with all ordinary-ness for the world to see, staring back at me while I slurped my soy milk and twigs, almost begging me to take a sharpie to one of their teeth. Cynical me, they weren’t the cover face of perfection I was used to, but they stuck with me, and this approach really felt congruent with Kashi’s whole ideology of goodness for everyone.
Anyway, it was also a great identifying piece - it was really handy when the hub was at the store and I could tell him, “get me the Kashi with the girl with the double chin and her mom”, or “pick up the Kashi with the two black people on it.” You know there aren’t going to be any other cereal boxes with a slightly chubby girl or darker skinned people on it.
I know Wal-Mart tried that approach in some of their flyers way back with store workers as models…however, the fact that they were modeling Wal-Mart clothing in a frumpy layout almost seemed like it was dragging down the people, and I felt a little bit sorry that this was probably a big thrill for them. So, it evoked pity and a little bit of sympathy, but not a desire to buy stuff. Kashi however, pulls it off I think, as the product is strong enough. As we learned in intro to design on Tuesday, the logo is given strength by the product it represents. They have me hooked – though I know, there will probably be some scandal in a few years saying we were all scammed by that organic stuff and that Kashi really used tapeworms for their twigs, blah blah blah.
That’s my thoughts for the day…which I spent mostly at work and now feel really behind in all my classes…
