Phylomeny

Isn’t it sad that the modernist, minimalist, universal identity of Vodafone is infiltrated by the funnily-lowerclass Turkish man? Yeah I know, Vodafone had to do this in order to compete with Turkcell’s Recep İvedik but this case is more problematic than Turkcell’s. Before I explain why I think so, I’d like to remind you that there are good ways of localizing an international corporate identity. I’ve looked at Vodafone websites from other countries like Qatar, India and Ghana and it seems they all handle it successfully:

So the problem isn’t the use of Turkish people or local values, the problem is the way the visual identity (and the corporate identity in general) becomes an object in this new style. It is no longer a higher-order system enveloping whatever we see: the immortal, idealized, sterile visuality descends to the level of the mortal, and our all-too-familiar character plays with it. He talks to it, he touches it, he shows it to us; he makes us connect to the abstract identity because we Turkish people can’t do it by ourselves: we like to see familiar people, we like to talk to familiar people, we like familiar stories told us. If you don’t believe me, look at our problematic relationship with modern (and especially abstract) art throughout the 20th century. Look at Turkish painters who went to live in Europe for years, witnessed all avant-garde movements from cubism to minimalism and then came back to Turkey only to draw villagers and horses in impressionist style.

So much for modernism in Turkey then.