Leaving tonight for Barcelona where I will be talking at the Innmotion festival tomorrow at the CCCB. Learn more about the event at the Innmotion 2009 site.
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3 ton sign falls onto Broadway, N.Y. (1912)
July 1, 2009
Just found this amazing image while doing some research. Another reason why the Department of Buildings regulates billboards.
Flickr Photo Download: 3 Ton Electric Sign Blown into Brdway, N.Y. (LOC). Another angle.
L.A. Weekly Reporter Wins Top Press Club Award For Investigative Article on Billboards
June 25, 2009
Congratulations to Christine Pelisek, whose L.A. Weekly article, “Billboards Gone Wild,” won this year’s L.A. Press Club Award for best hard news story in newspapers of more than 100,000 circulation. This article that focused on the woeful job the city has done controlling illegal billboards brought the issue to widespread public attention for the first time, and helped spur the city to start a billboard inventory, adopt a billboard moratorium, and rewrite the sign code to make it legally defensible.
L.A. Weekly: Billboards Gone Wild
via L.A. Weekly Reporter Wins Top Press Club Award For Investigative Article on Billboards.
Ad Nauseum comes out today
June 24, 2009
Carrie McLaren and Jason Torchinsky’s book, “Ad Nauseum: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture” comes out today. I have a copy and as a long time fan of Stay Free! magazine and, later, writer for the Stay Free! blog, I was still surprised at the great content I missed or forgot about. This morning I was flipping through it and multiple moments like, “What, David Cross wrote that story? Wow!”
I always liked Stay Free! because the content was smart and incisive, but always with a sense of humor. Keep an eye out for it.
Stay Free! on WNYC
June 22, 2009
Jason and Carrie from Stay Free! were on Brian Lehrer today talking about Ad Nauseam. You can listen to it here:
From Jitterbug to Twitter, Motivating Each Generation to Buy
June 12, 2009
I received this today in my inbox. I don’t think there is any commentary needed:
Hello Michael, Been wondering about this multi-generational workplace, how social media plays out with each generation and what it really means for how business will be conducted in the future? I have been invited to conduct a training class with a time and cost-saving platform and wanted to invite you to listen — at no charge. My one hour complimentary teleclass entitled “From Jitterbug to Twitter, Motivating Each Generation to Buy”
Why It Matters (from Ban Billboard Blight)
June 11, 2009
Dennis over at LA’s Ban Billboard Blight answers the question “Can’t you find something more important to be bothered about?”
Fighting The Outdoor Advertising Invasion: A Trivial Pursuit?
From time to time, someone will take offense at our activities on the grounds that advocating for protection of the visual environment from an onslaught of commercial advertising is a trivial cause compared to fighting poverty, or global warming, or gang warfare, or any number of other social and environmental ills. In other words, “Can’t you find something more important to be bothered about?” Continue reading →
End of Advertising (Igor Stromajer)
the end of advertising is actually the beginning of the rebirth of minimalist painting
photo by Igor Stromajer
Chicago Tribune: City losing war against sight blight
June 10, 2009
There’s a great op-ed in the Chicago Tribune by John McCarron. It starts:
“Chicago’s landscape is being swamped by a sea of unsightly billboards, advertising benches and illegal signs because of a toothless zoning ordinance that city officials admit cannot be enforced.”
Change is all around us, but in Chicago some things never change. Things like the above opening sentence, which I wrote 22 years ago for a front-page feature on how our city was being overrun with billboard blight.
He then explains how loopholes have enabled illegal signs to exist in Chicago for decades. He then talks about a new group, the Coalition Against Sign Pollution, who are looking to close the loopholes with a moratorium on outdoor signs:
Attorney Charles Levesque, a CASP founding member, said a ban would be legal because virtually all signs of any size are a “special use” under the zoning code and require a city permit. “It’s not a guaranteed right.” As for 1st Amendment issues, he points out that four states — Vermont, Hawaii, Maine and Alaska — have banned billboards altogether.
You can read the whole piece, City losing war against sight blight here.
Taxi Advertsing FAIL
June 4, 2009
Nothing quite so (dis)comforting as the blue screen of death in place of the usual taxi ads.
Note that the failed program is “Advertising”
NYT: DoB Removes sign with 103 violation notices
June 1, 2009
From The New York Times City Room blog:
For several years — in spite of 103 violation notices issued against it — a three-story, wrap-around billboard has blanketed the lower floors of the 19th-century Cushman Building, 174 Broadway, at Maiden Lane.
On Thursday, clearly feeling that its enforcement efforts had been lost on OTR Media Group, which installed the sign, and 1 Maiden Lane Realty, which owns the building, the Department of Buildings took the sign down itself.
“This is the first time the Department of Buildings has physically removed an illegal sign from a building,” the agency’s press secretary, Kate Lindquist, said. A company called Service Sign Erectors performed the work for the city.
Glad to see the Department of Buildings is able to follow up on one of the more flagrant billboards in the city. Ashamed that this is the first time, but I don’t believe that’s true – I remember they took down ads on sidewalk sheds a couple years ago? Also ridiculous that they hired a media company to remove the sign. But most importantly, there are hundreds of signs just like this one left to go. What to do? Later in the piece it’s clear just how much they respect these media companies have for the city and quality of life:
“The attorney for the respondent signed a stipulation agreeing to cease the display of illegal signage at the premises, and a judge recommended the removal of the sign,” Ms. Lindquist said in a statement. “After a removal order was posted, a Department of Buildings inspection determined the sign was removed, yet it was promptly reinstalled days after the inspection.”
We got graffiti!
May 28, 2009
Here are stills of the stencil I put up on the ads that went up on wall outside Eyebeam. And two images from people who answered the call!
NYT vs. SF Examiner on illegal storefront billboards
May 21, 2009
Why is the San Francisco Examiner doing a better job of reporting on illegal advertising than the New York Times?
Less than 10 days ago the Times published a story on billboards appearing on vacant storefronts. It almost reads like an ad itself:
Taking advantage of all the abandoned retail spaces in urban areas, marketers are leasing them at cut-rate prices and filling them with their ads.
At first, advertisers saw storefront advertising as a poor man’s billboard — that is, a bad thing. Now, they see it as a poor man’s billboard — that is, brilliantly frugal.
Nowhere in The Times story did it mention the ads were illegal. I wrote a letter to The Times, I got in touch with the writer, and I am hoping they will do a followup.
Meanwhile in San Francisco…
Today Brent Begin at the San Francisco Examiner published a story on the same phenomena, but with an entirely different take. In the first sentence he mentions that the signs are illegal:
A bright-blue advertisement for Intel popped up on the shuttered storefront that used to be a Disney Store on Post Street in Union Square, becoming one of many vacant buildings that has been illegally plastered with promotions.
Turning empty storefronts in San Francisco into advertisements is against city law and bothersome to anti-billboard advocates, but this latest trend in marketing is catching on.
The rest of the story is worth reading. Begin goes on to talk about the planning department’s effort to fight illegal billboards (at current count 43% of the cities 1532 billboards are illegal) and summarizes a brief history of guerilla marketing gone bad in San Francisco.
Kudos to Brent Begin at the SF Examiner for following the money.
P.S. If you’re interested in reading more, Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca visited San Francisco in 2007.
The Artvertiser
May 20, 2009
The Artvertiser is an urban, hand-held, augmented-reality project exploring the live substitution of advertising content for art.
Software is trained to recognise individual advertisements, each of which become a virtual ‘canvas’ on which an artist can exhibit when viewed through the hand-held device.
The project was initiated by Julian Oliver in February 2008 and is being developed in collaboration with artists Clara Boj and Diego Diaz.
This is the first in a series of video reports documenting the progress of the project.
You can read more about the project at http://theartvertiser.com
Paintballed Billboards
May 19, 2009
It’s a shame the billboards were blank…
Prague’s street art collective EPOS 257 recently converted some blank billboards into abstract art with the help of a few paintball guns. They write:
Shooting into the white surface of vacant billboards with a paintball gun – blank canvasses in an urban environment, a gesture expressing an opinion and at the same time abstract painting in a urban environmemt.
via urban prankster via wooster
