Desire Manufactured — Theo Ardinger

San Francisco-based designer

Desire Manufactured

Branding + Packaging

Senior Design Thesis, 2026

Desire Manufactured explores how branding and advertising shape consumer behavior by influencing what we like and how often we buy. Across industries, products are designed using the same core strategies: color, language, placement, and emotional appeal. These strategies aim to capture attention and reduce the time it takes to make a decision. What feels like a personal purchasing choice is often guided by carefully constructed patterns that prioritize familiarity and ease.

Featured in: SOMArts: Between the Lines

By presenting these products in a controlled retail display, this installation highlights how repeated exposure to these strategies leads to habitual consumption and mindless purchasing tendencies. Individually, these purchases may seem insignificant, but over time, they contribute to a broader system of overconsumption and ultimately environmental degradation. Instead of highlighting individual products as harmful, this work critiques the larger design systems that normalize constant purchasing and our relationship to consumption.