Brandscape Architects

After a trip, a move, and a short ailment, I’m back wandering the streets of Camden.  At times, I’ve been doing so in the company of representatives from corner shop brands. 

Each ad hoc display is an assemblage of material brought together by different actors, and branding reps play an important part in this curation.  As well as information about current promotions, these reps provide shops with a bounty of branded materials, including carrier bags, canopies, posters, stickers, sign boards, Ramadan schedules, Oyster card holders, window displays, leaflets, and pads of sticky notes.  While some of this material is used at the discretion of shopkeepers, materials are most often put up by the reps themselves.  The reps also advise shopkeepers on styles of display and, when allowed, reorganise products.  They may, for example, move their products to the front and centre of a display or assemble like products so direct comparisons can be made by consumers.

As discussed in earlier posts, brands become markers for ad hoc shops and help announce shops’ presence in space.  The identities of brand and shop are intertwined, especially in kiosks, which seldom display a business name.  To discuss these connections with a brand representative, I suggested how the Wall’s sign acts like the barber pole of the corner shop.  To further my analogy, he told me his posters are like the hairstyle photos inside the barber shop – they tell customers what’s on offer and educate on the latest styles.  

Competition is fierce for surface area and – with shop keepers’ permission – reps will cover the promotional materials of others.  Although reps remove outdated posters, layers of material are evident on all surfaces.  Constant visits to these shops ensure that materials are current, unobscured, and in good shape.

Material properties of the promotional stuff and the shops themselves pose challenges to the reps.  In one shop, packing tape doesn't adhere well to a new "silent" plastic newspaper box.  In another, a stairwell in front of a shop window makes applying stickers a challenge for Lyca reps, whose stickers are sticky only on the back.  Unlike Oyster stickers with double-sided adhesive, they cannot be applied from the inside.  Each new addition is documented with photographic evidence and submitted to the brands’ head office. 

Some reps explain that shop keepers are fortunate to don their brand.  They believe the benefits of brand association are payment enough.  Others offer shop keepers product vouchers or cash to display their promotional materials.  In either case, many brand representatives strike exclusive deals with shop keepers, to limit the presence of other branding on the shop front.  In businesses with such small margins, these deals are hugely advantageous.  Interactions between brands and shop keepers are not without dispute.  Negotiations for exclusivity are on-going and some shop keepers shared their frustration after waiting months for canopies promised after reps reorganised their displays.  Many are still waiting. 

Stack in the Box

In front of corner shops, the space between the thresholds and the property line is often furnished with a number of things.  These may include various types of fruit displays, Wall’s signs, lotto displays and signage, newspaper racks, flowers, sandwich boards, and postcard racks, among others. 

While most of these things are moved inside at night, at many corner shops, news agents and kiosks, one large box remains outside.

In my neighbourhood, phone card advertisements are often affixed to these boxes.  Alternatively, they are fashioned with metal and plastic frames used to display current magazine covers.  In either case, they show the layering of stickers, paint, practice, wear and tear.

Their mystery was solved at the news agent on Euston Road.  The keeper explained that his large blue metal box is used for early morning newspaper deliveries and as a place to deposit old papers and magazines. 

Then he let me see inside.

Turkish delight

I just returned from a trip to Istanbul. It was not a research expedition, but the care and precision of products displayed in markets and shops was noteworthy. In most fruit stands, for example, apples all sat with their stems upwards and in the Spice Bazaar treats were piled in perfect pyramids.

Upon my return, I noticed how much the image below, taken in Beyoğlu, resembles one I took last summer in London.

This was taken on Deptford High Street last July:

The images, things, and organisation are extraordinarily similar. This speaks, perhaps, to the transnational flow of certain types of (injection-mould, plastic) objects and to how curatorial logics are shared across borders.

There were other familiar landmarks as well. In Turkey, this one goes by the name "Algida"!

Through a hole, darkly

I have been experimenting recently with my pinhole camera.  It's a very simple device; it has no viewfinder, batteries, or play-back function, and uses medium-format film.

Because of the rudimentary nature of camera – and because the shutter must be manually opened for a number of seconds – the resulting images are blurry and atmospheric and warp in delightful ways.

This sort of photographic practice chimes with my project in a number of respects.  To start, because the shutter is open for so long, the images better capture the animation of things and spaces.  It captures movement – the unsteadiness of my hand, the flow of the city, and the vibrations of stationary things.

Equally as exciting to me, the camera itself feels like a thing as opposed to a technology.  In this, way, the camera remains a thing among things through the photographic process.

Because I don’t need to hold it to my face, the pin-hole camera doesn’t mediate my experience of the space.  My presence in the scene remains uninterrupted.  The camera, the other things in the shop, the shopkeeper, and I can all actively be in the space as its light and colour are captured on film.

The camera has become a welcomed talking point with shopkeepers.  Whereas the D-SLR can feel techy and conspicuous, the pin-hole is charming and unobtrusive. 

Although photography need not be about taking, street photography is often associated with masculinity, aggression, and a patriarchal way of seeing.   Certainly participation and openness can be felt in digital street photography as well.  Still, it feels like the pin-hole camera tends towards greater sharing, participation, and parity.

I am really taken by the softness of the images in contrast to the characteristic plasticity or shininess of the brands.  The pin-hole camera literally takes the edge off and references the tenderness of the curation. It seems to challenge the linearity and brandedness of the things in these places.  By capturing pattern and colour, the pin-hole melts these brands into the texture of the city.

Border state

When I moved to London in autumn 2010, corner shops had bright blue adhesive borders around their windows to advertise the TFL Oyster top-ups available inside. Six months later or so, I noticed Lebara phone card branding had begun occupying this space. The vibrant azure blue is virtually the same in both brands.

Outside of my study area, but along an often travelled route, shop keepers on Edgware Road combine the Oyster and Lebara borders.  It is a very clever – and virtually seamless – merging of branded material. (Very exciting!)

 

In the last few months it seems Lebara has been upstaged by Lyca, another phone company, which has been increasingly occupying this edge space.  Their blue is more cobalt in hue. 

Recently Oyster stepped up and designed a flashier border, which uses the azure and cobalt blues on the Oyster logo card.  The cobalt matching the Lyca logo quite well.  

Like the shop on Edgware Road, the shops in Bloomsbury/King's Cross area show some amazing mash-ups of this material.  In the image below, Oyster, Lyca, and Lebara collide.

Wall's has also become part of the shop window borderlands.

Writing's on the Wall's

At Goldsmiths’ urban photography summer school last July, I became fixated on the Wall’s ice cream sign that corner shops place on the pavement. Like the barber pole, these signs act as landmarks, announcing not only the treats inside, but also the shops in urban space.

The signs also illuminate the everyday practice of shopkeepers and highlight how mass-produced things acquire individual character through placement and use.

More recently, I have been thinking about the relationship between materiality of corner shops and the fabric of the city. The Wall’s ice cream sign can be seen as an urban London icon. Is it coincidence that the Wall’s sign shares colour and form with the other more celebrated London icons?