Virtual Commons - Bridgewater State University

Lightning Round: Coffee Cups That Make You Happy: Designing the Good Life

Moakley Auditorium

“Coffee Cups That Make You Happy: Designing the Good Life,” takes up domestic design in the shape of product packaging, exploring the rhetorical construction of household goods. Exploring the cultural arguments presented by Martha Stewart’s home product branding, I pay close attention to packaging narratives included on domestic wares sold at Kmart and Macy’s. Packaging is a crucial element in product purchases, and packaging narratives (descriptive prose text on product packaging) play a key element in this. Effective branding campaigns—those that most successfully bond consumers’ emotional, social, and intellectual desires to particular brands—are those that most successfully tell a story that connects to an identity desired by a target market. The presentation concludes by exploring the importance of doing. Consumption is often framed as an empty practice with little functional purpose. I argue that these objects’ functionality is critical to activating the cultural myths promised by the brand.