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Friday, March 21st, 2008
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2:30p - Ad break
I'm a sucker for smart advertising. What I particularly enjoy is clever appropriation of the outdoors: the 'ambient' advertising that many people find particularly objectionable. A company logo on the risers of a staircase, say, or a voucher printed on the reverse of a bus ticket.
HOVIS
Originally uploaded by addedentryThis week I found and photographed three 'ghost signs' in Oxford - faded advertisements painted on walls. Each one promotes a business I assume to be long defunct. I reckon that any proposal to overpaint these signs would be strongly opposed, despite their intrusiveness. The distinction of age offers ads the sympathetic attention of Past Times or a nostalgic museum.
I once wrote that 'the countryside makes me uncomfortable because it isn't labelled'. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) j4 has a thought experiment of a retreat from text, some place where you wouldn't see letters on signs, or packaging, or anything to read; it would be surprisingly difficult to guarantee. But I don't believe that taking down billboards and shuttering shopfronts would provide a neutral public space, not while libraries, and mosques, and fountains, and so on present their own values.
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