Regret -

beyond what we’re sold?

Regret is an academic branding project exploring the relationship between advertising, desire and consumer culture. Developed through research and material experimentation, it brings visual communication and contemporary art together in a fictional food brand.

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Timeline

2022 · 5 months

Project Type

Academic Pre-Thesis · Behind the Image

Role

Research, Identity, Copy, Packaging & Photography

Mentors

Mahesh Bhat & Jayasimha Chandrashekhar

“Behind the Image” asked how images construct meaning within the city. The enquiry focused on the distance between advertising’s promises and everyday needs: how do products become symbols of happiness, belonging and status, and when does aspiration begin to shape purchasing decisions?

Food became a metaphor for the appetite to acquire more. Headphones formed a burger, leather became ravioli, and plastic straws replaced cereal. These deliberately inedible constructions used familiarity and humour to make ordinary purchases appear strange, opening space to question their appeal.

Red and yellow, bold typography and styled photography borrowed the conventions of supermarket branding. The tagline “Not so great” undercut the sales pitch, while ingredients, nutritional panels and preparation instructions carried information about materials, product behaviours and their consequences.

Six physical packages brought the work from constructed objects and photography through dielines, test prints and assembly. The series answered the brief through a deliberate contradiction: the same visual devices that make a product desirable became a means of examining what its image leaves out.