Wednesday
Sep082010
Hammer & Sickle Vodka
An exquisite design from Monahan & Rhee: "When Klin Spirits embarked on the launch of a new luxury Russian vodka, we were asked to develop the brand's core visual language. Beginning with the design of the bottle, we have continued to produce award-winning communications across every media form. Following its launch, Hammer + Sickle quickly became the best-selling luxury vodka in Russia."
26 Comments | Posted on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 
Reader Comments (26)
Don't want to be political but would like to remind that capitalism has caused more deaths than communism.
Only question is whether the communist sub-text would be negatively perceived in the US market. Only retarded (in the chronological and political sense of the term) Maccarthyists would be offended by the sub-text in the american market. And few these days are old enough to be Maccarthyists or are educated enough in america to understand the sub-text.
Altogether, even considering the sub-text, this is an awesome design.
As to your claim that only McCarthyists would be offended by the use of the symbols of the USSR in the American context, that's both cheap ad hominem and plainly false. For example, First Amendment absolutists would be deeply offended by McCarthyism, by the Soviet Union, and by some of the specific individuals persecuted by either. (For example, some members of the Hollywood Ten had earlier explicitly embraced some of the measures which would used against them, when those measures were first introduced to persecute American Trotskyites during WWII.)
You can pour out a stream of rhetoric all you want that the concept of capitalism doesn't exist, but it's about people's perception. And as far as people go, their perception is the reality.
So to bring this back on design, there is a subtext, and its meaning is set by people's own definition, not the dictionary's. Because it is people who perceive messages and brands, and buy a product or not, not the Merriam-Webster.
No one will be offended! The same way historians don't get offended when they're investigating Nazi artifacts or rubble from Rome. Same way you don't get offended when you see a documentary about Hitler. Or better yet, a dumb Hollywood movie about Nazis. None of them are a tribute to anything.
It's a great design and judging from the thread of comments, a very successful one as well.
T— What the thread of comments here actually show is that the design moves some people to offense, and that reaction (rather than the design) moves others to mount a defense of communism. Not much vodka being sold in-process.
"Not much vodka being sold in-process."
"Hammer + Sickle quickly became the best-selling luxury vodka in Russia."
We were specifically discussing about what was illustrated by the comments, not whether the vodka sold well somewhere. Had Germany never gone through a process of denazification, a swatsika-branded product might have sold well in the late '60s. It would have done quite badly outside of Germany.
As for the design goes, it's a successful one regardless of the whining of sensitive Americans. It is sold well in Russia and if I spot it in a Liquor store in Canada, I'll buy it.
Your exact words were “judging from the thread of comments, a very successful one as well.” We were discussing what was shown by the comments, exactly because you made a claim about what whas shown by them.
Further, it was you, not I, who first compared the symbols to those of Naziism, in your comment of 17 Sep. Your comparison was actualy rather apt, though it takes the normal reader in a direction opposite to that in which you wish him or her to go.
Those of us have criticized this design have criticized it as a design. Design interacts with social cotext. This prticular design very consciously does so, and those of us who have criticized it have criticized it in that dimension.
Your insistence that, just somehow, negative aspects of that dimension don't count is nonsense.
It was T who said that the success of the deisgn could be seen “judging from the thread of comments”, and I was explictly replying to T.
It was T who introduced the comparison of the use of the hammer-and-sickle to the symbols of Naziism.
All design interacts with social context, and this design makes very conscious use of that dimension, so that criticizing it in that dimension is perfectly relevant.
What I and other people are saying is that subtext is relative, while you believe your interpretation is absolute. You interpret the subtext in one way and say it is in "poor taste". To judge whether a design is appropriate for a market, it’s important to understand how many people in general have a certain interpretation and why. But when this interpretation comes from obsessed people with twisted versions of reality or history, it can be dismissed. So the question is (discounting you), how many people in the general target market even attach a deep meaning to the symbols on the bottle, and whether it is deeply offending. I don’t think it will be that many. Certainly not enough to warrant a change of design.
You did deeper into incoherence, falsehood, and projection. A disinterested party can review the comments to see, for exmaple, you twice claimed that I'd said that capitalism doesn't exist, whereas instead I said that the term “capitalism” is ill-defined (citing four dictionaries).
I'm not sure what your first language must be for you to claim that “those of us” is equivalent to “everyne else including me”.
Show me where anyone at all (I or someone else) has said that subtext is absolute.
Even within just Russia itself, this design doesn't confront only those who are nostalgic or indifferent about the USSR.
There have been products that made use of images celebrating slavery (though Jack Daniels is not amongst them). Some of them sold well. None-the-less, they were in poor taste, whether sold only in the South or not. Pointing to the many who were *not* offended doesn't change that.
Moving on...
I've addressed your “main” point more than once. If you don't want me to also explode your other claims, then don't make them.
The problem for your flailing argument is, as I've already stated, that the symbols on this bottle aren't simly confronting people for whom they are pleasant or innoccuous. Russia (the original market for this package) is full of people who were victims of the regime in question.
You attack me for ostensibly dealing in absolutes, then you declare slavery to be “unequivocal”, which is your way of presenting it as an absolute.
I didn't introduce the example of symbols of images celebrating slavery; that was done on 18 Sep by T/SmartCanadian. The point there is far less “personal” than your declarations of my motivations.
The fact is that symbols that celebrate slavery can and have been read by other people very different from how I would read them, and proobably from how you would read them. Certainly, to use T's other example, the symbols of Naziism have meant and continue to mean different things to different people.
It is simply disingenuous to pretend that a Russian who was vicitmized by the USSR can be expected to look at this bottle and think warmly of “the unity between the proletariat and peasantry”.
He ain't even smart enough to read a couple of numbers right and make a distinction between me and some other Canadian dude.
There's a reason why the pages in his Webster's are stuck together.