I Make Pretty Garbage
I probably do one of the most useless jobs you have never heard of.
Everyday I go to work and make the most eye-catching and mesmerizing trash you have ever seen. At least I attempt to, you know the old saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". So really its up to you as to weather or not what I do is mesmerizing or not.
I work for a company that creates printing plates for flexographic presses. My title goes by many names: production artist, production engineer, desktop artist, prepress, prepress engineer, production technician, art technician, desktop operator and countless other forms of the name. Some sound important others not so much.
In reality all I do is create ascetically pleasing packaging that attempts to catch your eye in the supermarket, so you will buy a companies product. In the end though that beautiful packaging ends up in your trash can which then ends up in the landfill. Piled upon piles of other beautiful trash.
I am a facilitator of the consumer cycle that feeds off of wether or not a package is "pretty" enough for them to purchase and then throw away. The Journal of Consumer Psychology used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to conclude that people care deeply about how a package looks rather than the product itself.
The study showed that more consumers where willing to buy an unknown and personally un-tested brand over one they had used in the past. As long as the packaging was ascetically more pleasing. Noting that the consumer feels as though they are being rewarded for purchasing the product over a less visually appealing product.
When did our society become so empty and without meaning that we would rather have beautiful trash rather than a quality product?
To those that retain substance that have not fallen to the levels of our current consumer society.