Branded Bodies seeks to explore the interaction between brand identities, targeted advertising, and how it informs our perception of the human body within the world around us. This is explored through a combination of photography, brand market research, and brand creation to evaluate the effects of the human body as a vessel for brand identities on the consumer’s perception of those brands.

Branded Bodies strives to both critique consumerism and its targeted advertising and do those things itself, showing how the human body is distilled down to a physical object to be used by these brands. With the rapidly increasing reliance on big brands and their identities for our self-perceptions and judgments, the way that brand identities use the human body can change how we see the body. The effects of advertising on the human psyche and body image have been thoroughly investigated. However, I’m interested in delving specifically into the effects of brand identity on our cultural perception of the human body. In psychologist Jacques Lacan’s essay, The Mirror Phase, he discusses the moment an infant first recognizes themselves in the mirror. This relatability to an external image paves the way for the rest of our lives, where humans are constantly seeking to find themselves in external imagery. Branded Bodies segments the body into abstract pieces of imagery, providing a space for any person to see themselves and find relatability within these brands. The insights gained from this thesis can be implemented in brand design to investigate how brand imagery, in correlation with the human body, can influence personal identity and relation to a brand.

Branded Bodies is an exploration of the transformation of the human body into something two-dimensional, a vessel used to carry the identity of these brands. The thesis critiques society’s acceptance of this behavior and the way that consumers are categorized into their most basic identities; while taking advantage of that to create a meta-brand for those qualities.