GUTALIN
СOMMUNICATION THEORY IN THE FIELD OF DESIGN
Communication theory is based on the idea of transmitting information from the sender to the recipient using a certain system of elements (language, visual images, signs and symbols, medium). In such a system, design is the fundament of visual art. In contemporary art and brand design, each element conveys information to the user both verbally and non-verbally. For example, shapes and colors are being selected according to the human’s psychological perception; the text is written and designed in the way to create a hierarchy of meanings that a reader must see. There exist unique combinations of design solutions for a huge variety of platforms. Thus, communication theory plays a major role in fields where the visual appearance must transfer a certain message to the viewer.
Our project is a fictional brand of professional makeup ‘GUTALIN’, aimed at an audience of musicians and fans of the metal music genre and aesthetics. In this project, we strived for building up both visual and textual communication strategies for multiple purposes; they create a unique brand identity that can convey brand values clearly. Thus, the design of our brand and everything in relation is not just a visual design, but also a strategy for reaching the consumer.
PRESENTATION FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE
GUTALIN website for desktop homepage
WHO ARE WE?
Facepaint and makeup are not just a mask, but the face of a metalhead. We are ‘GUTALIN’, a brand that knows how important it is not to smear blackness from our lips during a concert; that knows how to be deadly beautiful. 'GUTALIN’ is a torn spiked jacket, broken drum sticks, but perfectly long-lasting and safe makeup.
WHO FOR?
Are you a metalhead? A band member? A fan, a subculture one or a makeup artist? Great, nice to meet you! Our mission is to help you keep your true colors to the end. No matter how hard the bloody rain is, no matter how much you sweat at a concert or a photo shoot, ‘GUTALIN’ will stay on you, while hardly sensing on your skin.
Plus, you no longer need to worry that your dermis will be wiped off along with a layer of makeup! What will actually manage to cleanse your makeup perfectly is our special line of skin and hair care. Despite anything that your face went through during a concert, your skin will breathe and stay refreshed for your next transformation.
GUTALIN website for desktop 'Makeup lines' page
SUGGESTING WHAT?
The fundament of our arsenal is quality. In short: super-durability, safety, saturation. All ingredients are hypoallergenic. The colors will remain as bright and even until your very end. Our core is a professional unique makeup line for heavy facepaint. Every product released is specifically built for meeting the needs and standards for those who want long-lasting and multi-layered makeup.
STANDING WITH?
We are proud of our ambassadors — the bands ‘BEYOND OPIUM’, ‘veilXstone', 'DyingDarling’ and ‘PRESS! ’. If you were ever fascinated by their corpsepaints, then, — thank you! ‘GUTALIN’ team is extremely pleased with your rate.
Find us in SEPHORA, Golden Apple, L’etoile, Ulta and Hot Topic retail stores. Most of them have makeup services, so you can give us a try with ‘GUTALIN’ makeup artists there.
PRESENTATION FOR A PROFESSIONAL AUDIENCE
Black metal is not just a direction in music, it is a whole culture where visual image makes a fundamentally important place. Stage makeup (face and body paint) is as essential as music in terms of performance. However, nowadays there are no professional products on the market that fully meet the requirements of the genre artists: most cosmetics are not long-lasting enough, these cannot manage with full-fledged performances, and theatrical makeup is often inconvenient to apply, clogs pores and dirties clothes.
We have developed a brand of professional makeup that addresses the pains and needs of black metal musicians.
Our key features are: 1. High durability — makeup can withstand hours of performance. 2. Easy to apply and remove — comfortable textures that can be applied quickly and easily washed off with a cleanser without harm to the skin. 3. Safety and care — the formula uses hypoallergenic ingredients which do not dry or irritate the skin and are suitable for frequent use. 4. Branding and image — visuals and communication language correspond to the spirit and aesthetics of black metal.
GUTALIN presentation slide (example)
We’ve done a research on relevant market tendencies. There are thousands of black metal bands and festivals in Europe and North America alone, and tens of thousands of professional and semi-professional artists. Hundreds of themed events are held annually in the alternative music industry, and the demand for specialized makeup turns out to be consistently high. The portrait of our customer is not only musicians, but also their fans, photo shoots and themed events makers, professional makeup artists and alternative culture stores. — Similar niches (for example, cosplayers, theater and cinema makeup) show growth of up to 20% per year.
Our product solves the real pain of the artists and also promotes black metal culture by forming a community around the brand. The high marginality of professional cosmetics and low competition in the niche guarantees beneficial income and quick investment returns.
GUTALIN presentation slide (example)
At the moment, cosmetic products for black metal artists are rather sparsely represented in stores.
For example, e.l.f. Cosmetics and Liquid Death have collaborated to create a set of cosmetics for corpspaint. This project is a very good example of the spread of metal culture in the cosmetic environment.
‘No one knows more about makeup than the black metal community. Think how many times they’ve put it on or taken it off with every show’
— Andy Pearson, vice president of creative at Liquid Death
The project turned out to be a success — the commercial gained 145,000 viewers on YouTube, and the products were sold out in a matter of minutes. This case proves the high demand for such cosmetics, and at the same time, once again, underlines the low competition in this area — the collection of e.l.f. Cosmetics and Liquid Death was only a limited set, and our project is a new unique brand that includes several lines of decorative and care cosmetics for black metal artists, thus providing all products needed. The customer will not have to seek for specific products among different brands, — everything is available in ‘GUTALIN’.
possible products' concepts
There are presented professional makeup and face paint brands such as SPLASH and Kryolan on the market. Despite the high quality and affordable prices, these brands can repel potential clients of portrait with their design, and focus mainly on children’s audience or theatrical makeup artists. The expanse of these brands' collections can also confuse customers who purchase their products to create particularly corpsepaints. Our brand, despite its numerous positions, focuses precisely on the aesthetics of black metal. The goods’ packaging will make it clear which aesthetics ‘GUTALIN’ belongs to, hence even most inexperienced customers will understand exactly what they need.
The Make Up For Ever marketing approach is the closest for us. The founder of the brand, Dani Sanz, adheres to the philosophy of ‘professional cosmetics for everyone’. Our company’s products are also high-quality products that are at the same time easy to use.
What we also considered a good marketing strategy is collaborating with black metal bands. The members could become our ambassador, thus representing our makeup products and showing the goods by face. Such a method would be both beneficial for us and for the bands, enlarging our and their audiences reciprocally.
possible makeup stalls' concepts
To spread the brand name, we plan being presented in makeup retail stores and communicating via social media, such as Bleusky, TikTok etc. Another idea for representing ‘GUTALIN’ is holding special events in the stores, for example, makeup services by corpsepaint professional artists using our products, and being represented as merchandise outlets on concerts.
To summarize, cosmetics specializing in black metal aesthetics are a unique and relevant product that has little competition in the market and is designed for a large audience who find image an essential part of their culture.
COURSE THEORY IMPLEMENTION
PRESENTATIONS ORGANIZATION
To structure the presentation for our potential audiences (customers and professionals) competently and clearly, we relied on The Five Canons of Rhetorical. First we created arguments and content. Then we arranged the arguments in a certain order. Next, we chose a style and language of communication for each of the audiences: for consumers, it is a convincing, bold and challenging-styled language and applying the idea of understanding their pain as clients. For a professional audience, the language is strict but inspiring, and followed by pictorial presentation slides. In both cases, we rely on verstaile principles of persuasion. Memory and Delivery steps are omitted; however, if we were publishing our project in real life, we would choose the Net space as communication platforms, since the key to delivering a message in modern life is online media. This is exactly what we focus on when developing a strategy through social media and our website.
GENERAL COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES
Building communication with customers, we took two traditions of Robert T. Craig as a basis: socio-cultural and socio-psychological. Our method is presumably a hybrid between them. First speaking of the socio-cultural tradition in the project, we focused on the practices and culture of particular individuals: the subculture of black, death and trash-metal genre performers, who actively use peculiar makeup on stage. In addition to the unique qualities of cosmetics (long-lastingness, high-end formulas, skin and hair care created specifically for heavy layers of makeup) that we produce for clients’ needs, we also focus on those symbols and signs that are close to them. At the same time, it was important for us to modify the informal, ‘freaky’ visual so that it is not too elegant, since sweet design usually made for a female audience, may alienate the target consumer.
Such an approach is closely related to the second tradition applied in the project, the socio-psychological one. The culture of metalheads is closely related to psychological factors: the attraction to non-conformism, pretentious appearance and breaking social norms. However, in addition to the unique ones, we also refer to the universal laws of society. We know that in different societies and ethnicities (where our target customers also exist) there are incentives to which all people react in approximately the same way. These are, for example, subconscious conflicts and insecurities, such as the desire to possess the best product, the desire to be on top. That is why it is important for us to position our brand as professional, expensive and unique. On the other side, it is also important for us to attract those consumers who also want to be involved in something exceptional, but cannot afford it: to achieve this, we created a small middle-market line of cosmetics that would be available at a lower price for representatives of the lower middle class or slightly higher.
AFFORDANCES
We mentioned earlier the active use of web platforms to provide communication with clients and potential partners. We know that affordance theory is important in technological communication. It is necessary to guarantee a constant online dialogue with the client: for example, there are placed many clickable elements on our website: tabs with various contents interesting to the user, such as About Us, Makeup Lines, News, Ambassadors, Contact, FAQ, Feedback and Social Media links. We would also have new product announcements and releases, presentations of collaborations and ambassadors, as well as viral short vertical videos using memes in our social media accounts to assure constant interaction and a dialogical cycle with users. These will be presented as well on social media as on the website page.
It is also important for us to have individual interaction. We considered it with those representatives who are attractive to us as ambassadors or collaborators. It is important for us to subscribe to these people, be an attractive partner for them, and follow their news. Successful results will be symbiotic relationships with metal bands. A preview of this could be seen on ‘AMBASSADORS’ website page. Of course, it is also important for us to provide real-time feedback. Therefore, we mentioned initiating events and invitations at retail outlets, and providing news about them right at the moment.
Description of the application of the generative model
All visuals presented were created using Leonardo AI - https://app.leonardo.ai/ Texts and designs of 'presentation slides' and 'website' were edited by hand.
All texts were conducted and written by hand. Brand data and cases mentioned are real, except for music band names.
This project’s theory is based on materials from the Communication Theory course.
Images are created by https://app.leonardo.ai/
