I once sat in on a Bunnie Huang presentation about labor conditions in South China, and he described the factories where rubber logos – the Nike swoosh on the side of a shoe, the rubber designer’s logo hanging from the top button-hole of a shirt – are made. The workers lack basic safety clothes and often end up with several companies’ logos branded into their skin by the hot metal.

Since then, I’ve found it nearly impossible to think about branding without thinking of the young women of the Pearl River Delta with all those logo-marks – vector art from the west turned into curdled flesh in the east – burned into their skin.

Eliot’s T-shirt bears his new “Meaning” logo, a collection of abstract shapes with no discernible pattern.
“You’re co-branding with a label called ‘Meaning’,” Karl had told him.
“What kind of a product is this logo attached to?”
“That’s the brilliant thing, El. It’s not attached to anything. Not yet.”
“Wha?”
“It’s a brand without a product. It’s pure meaning, so to speak. Meaning is hoping to use licensing deals to grow its Reputation. Then, the Meaning people — really, just a group of graphic designers working out of a loft in Seoul — hope some bigger firm will buy out their Name. They’ve got a dozen Brand Names growing, evolving, in the mediasphere. It’s a great business opportunity and a whole new way of building brands.”