Sao Paulo

As many of you will already know, outdoor advertising was banned in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1997. It was a very revolutionary bid to reclaim the visual and mental environment of the city. However, after all the ad's were removed, many people began to complain that it had left the city as a very bland concrete landscape with obvious gaps where the billboards once stood but now the blank canvas is allowing creativity to flourish. And now for the first time, São Paulo has approved a permanent outdoor art exhibition. The project, dubbed RojoOut, is bringing the city to life with colorful installations in 11 locations.

Ctrl, Alt, Delete

Last April in New York dozens of New York artists and activists battled the clutter of consumerism in a guerrilla-style billboard takeover. Mobilized by Jordan Seiler and the Public Ad Campaign, the 24-hour direct action replaced nearly 19,000 square feet of illegal advertising with original, anti-corporate street art. They were removing/changing billboards and posters that according to Seiler were not properly licensed and were violating bylaws that had been on the City's books since the 1940s. I find this very inspirational as I feel it's very important to regulate the use of advertising by corporations and I think that designers need to take more responsability of what they produce, too many graphic designers are willing to work for sole destroying companies that are lying to the consumers about how great they are.

HP Invent

Tom Wrigglesworth and Matt Robinson, two recent design graduates from Kingston University produced this video called 'HP Invent' for the D&AD awards brief set by Hewlett Packard. 'Present an idea that promotes HP worksations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive.' Their video earned them 2nd place and a yellow pencil. For some reason 1/3 of it is cut off on the right hand side of this video so double click to watch it in full screen.

Madmen

Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative drama Madmen follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an immensly ego driven world where key players make an art of the sale. It's a very interesting incite into how the advertising world may have worked at the time. They have to deal with changing views and information in the world. Most notably the changing views on smoking in season 1 where many ad campaigns are claiming that it's good for you and how they deal with the realisation of the public that it is infact not so. It also depicts the roles of men and women in this era underneath the guise of traditional 1960s family values. I have watched the most part of the first season and would recommend it as some very interesting and entertaining viewing. It's easy to find it online.