Highlighting the absurdity of the consumerist culture and the addiction to instant-gratification and hopes of achieving lasting happiness through a satirical piece.
Creative Direction, Art Direction, Graphic Design, Motion Design, Web Design
Design and Direction
Alisa Mahat
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This project was done as part of my degree, BA(Hons) Graphic Communication at Loughborough University.
Consumerism is big in many parts of the world and it has been a growing theme in those areas since the 18th century. The millennials’ spendings have exceeded those of the Baby Boomers and the former is expected to increase their annual spendings by 1.4 trillion when they reach their peak shopping years. It is hard to notice that consumerism is consuming us when we are brought up in this very environment and ads are constantly convincing us that wants are needs.
The aim of this project is to have the target audience - the millennials - to realise the absurdity of the consumerist culture and the addiction to instant-gratification through a satirical piece that highlights the senselessness of the desire to buy to be instantly-gratified in hopes of achieving lasting happiness. Only through realising the issue that the consumers can rethink their actions.
The Consumerist and Eternal Fulfilment is a satirical religion that supports the consumerist culture and encourages their followers to shop. The ultimate goal for the religion is to attain eternal fulfilment and happiness and this is done by constantly purchasing material goods.
Often, buying an item one desire makes them gratified and fulfiled but that feeling isn't permanent. This causes a vicious cycle of buying and buying with no eternal fulfilment achieved. The religion resides on a digital platform, a website, to target the generation with increasing spending power over the next few years - the millennials.
The landing page features a brief overview view of the religion - explaining how happiness was found and created and the facets of the Blood Diamond. The Blood Diamond acts as the foundation and is a religious obligation the follower must adhere to.
Apart from the landing page, the website has 3 other main areas to explore. The users can watch and listen to Evangelists spread their Gospels, discover the nearest place of worship they can visit and become a follower of the religion.
The users can sit back and relax to watch various figures spreading the gospel and encouraging them to purchase a myriad of product they definitely need in their life. These videos range from ones that has plenty of product placements to the ones that are paid for by a company to sell a product.
If the users ever feel like they want more, they can simply press a button to showcase another random evangelist to listen.
Next, the users can also discover the nearest place of worship by first selecting their region.
They will then be led to a page with a map showing a few locations - and spoiler alert, they are all pointing towards some of the biggest malls in the chosen area.
Apart from that, on the page, the users can also learn and recite the prayers.
And finally whent the users are convinced they need to attain eternal fulfilment and life-long happiness, the can be a follower.
This is when they will be asked to purchase The Consumerist and Eternal Fulfilment Golden Plate to be a follower. The Golden Plate may not have any functions but it sure looks enticing.
And if that's not enough, throughout the site, there will be popups that attempt to make the users shop. These popups lead to actual online shops where the users can actually purchase. These popups are also extremely annoying.
And remember, if you need a little help, you can always
