Lately I’ve seen a lot of imagery about various ways to inject some green into train stations around the world from large pots on the platforms to planted cars that travel along with the train but the Meadow Fresh milk company in New Zealand decided to take it a step further and lay out an entire carpet of green to tranform a station into a meadow with grass and even buttercups.
On July 12th of 2009, Britomart Station in Aukland was covered with 1,250 square meters of turf grass. The grass had been rolled out and setup throughout the night before, ready and waiting for the first trains to arrive at 7 a.m. I love the idea of these people rolling into the station with no idea that the grass is there, with cameras ready to capture the genuine reactions of the passengers as they step off into the grass, taking off their shoes and being handed little cartons of milk with straws. The station looks like it’s been transformed into a park complete with kids playing around with soccer balls. For one day this station wasn’t just a sea of concrete where people passed through on the way to or from somewhere, but they actually stopped to enjoy the moment.
After a full day of covering the concrete floors of the train station, the sod was then rolled up and transported to a local school where it would carpet the areas between new classrooms being built.
And of course, I had to track down the actual commercial that was shot. The music is perfect, captures that child-like spirit that seems to be brought out in people as they see the surprise awaiting them at the platform. This just continues to show that a little bit of green can do wonders for people.
Monday January 04th 2010, 10:24 pm
Filed under: Advertising
These signs depicting a before shots of nearby crosswalks were placed at key locations throughout Crawfordsville, Indiana for Altschul Orthodontics. The clever signage uses a manipulated crosswalk to demonstrate how a little orthodontic work can straighten up your pearly whites.
I had to share this funny ad that I came across which seems to be using a living wall to promote a new women’s deodorant product from Rexona called Naturals. It’s probably fake leaves, I can’t tell for sure but either way, it’s funny how the idea of vertical greening is catching on even in the advertising world. The advertising agency was Lowe Ginkgo in Montevideo, Uruguay and came out in September 2009.
Once pristine waterways around the world now resemble sewage drains or garbage dumps. Organizations are trying to raise awareness of this growing problem like with this campaign by the Arts and Earth Festival in conjunction with the Global Environment Centre. Throughout the city of Kuala Lumpur, larger-than-life drinking straws were placed in rivers and streams with the message “Continue polluting, and soon you may not have a choice” to try to encourage people to vote in favor of compulsary recycling. The message harkened back to the January 2006 event when water resembling sewer water came pouring out from everyone’s faucets. The point of the ad was to encourage peole to vote in favor for compulsory recycling to stop the water pollution.
This intelligent ad by STIR marketing seeks to bring awareness of the polluted state of the Milwaukee River and takes advantage of the clever location to give people a clear picture of what the river could be and what it is now. By getting people to look at the river with the view of having it as a swimming area, it suddenly seems more of an issue. It’s no longer just a river, there is more of a measurable value put on it, something that people can better understand than just clean vs. polluted. Marketing can be very powerpul in grabbing attention and helping to find solutions.
As designers of the built environment, we are always concerned about safety. Or rather concerned about being sued for not safeguarding everything to death. But the reality of it is, people climb on stuff, fall off stuff, in stuff, over stuff and generally find ways to hurt themselves in even the “safest” of environments. Especially children.
When I saw this ad campaign for the Hospital Aleman in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I couldn’t help but laugh. As a kid I was constantly trying to climb trees only to have my Mom tell me to get down because I would hurt myself. Then one day, in the safety of my Grandma’s living room, I did a cartwheel and landed wrong. My left arm snapped clean through the middle.
Wednesday June 10th 2009, 4:56 pm
Filed under: Advertising
This ad campaign for Save Our Seas Foundation really caught my attention with the clever delivery of their message. This non-profit organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland works with the purpose to implement and support diverse programs centered around the protection of the Earth’s marine environment. This particular campaign is geared towards the human perception of sharks as predators and how that has affected their declining population.
A sign that says “Warning: Predators Beyond This Point” is posted on the Two Oceans Aquarium shark tank in Cape Town, South Africa but is backwards as if providing the warning to the sharks about the faces looking at them through the glass. The message states “Humans kill over 100 million sharks every year”.
Saatchi & Saatchi from Cape Town, South Africa devised this campaign to help bring to light the 100 million sharks that are slaughtered every year by humans eventhough 4 humans are attacked by them.
Along with the typical information about the different species within the tank, an additional plaque was positioned under the shark tank as part of the campaign. It depicts a human with the description:
“A fierce predator found in both warm and cold waters. Preys on sharks, finning them alive and leaving them to drwon in the open seas. Offspring, if uneducated, may imitate behaviour of adult species.”
Billboards are an eyesore and even though every now and then someone is creative with them, I could still do without. But perhaps there could be another use for billboards. A little urban vertical farming perhaps? Have the restaurant grow all their vegetables on a billboard and then slap their logo in the corner?
This billboard for the golden arches, designed by advertisting agency Leo Burnett of Chicago, tries to get the point of freshnes across with real lettuce. “Over the course of three weeks, 16 varieties of lettuce found in McDonald’s salads were planted and grown on a billboard”.
Since I’ve been spending the day grading parking lots, roads and stormwater systems…I can’t help but be highly amused by these.
This is an advertising campaign from Bates Y&R for Jeep around Copenhagen as a way to communicate the ability of the vehicle to be able to park on any terrain, even on stairs and up on planters.
Sunday May 31st 2009, 12:57 pm
Filed under: Advertising
This creative ad from Brazilian advertising agency Ponto de Criação in São Paulo tries to put global warming into a perspective that people can better identify with. The message is “Global Warming: When you feel it, it’s already too late”. It does amazing job at getting the point across regarding the shrinking of habitat. Check it out.
I’m a big fan of interesting public art, demonstrations or advertising because it interupts the day to day and causes a person to pause. Anything that can grab someone’s attention even for a moment in the hustle and bustle of daily life is a good thing. So often we bury ourselves in our routines that we find ourselves wondering halfway through the day….where did the day go? what did I do with the last hour? Is it really May…what happened to April?
But not only is it a problem that we don’t pay attention to the world around us but often we are so over stimulated by things like advertising covering all of our vertical surfaces that we tend not to pay attention to the things around us because we are almost trained to ignore it. It’s everywhere and it has become a visual nuissance.
I love this artistic statement called Pixelator in New York City that turns obnoxious advertising screens into dynamic works of art. And the best part is, it’s ridiculously simple. Sheer brilliance I say. From the website: Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.
Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting (an estimated $274,000 per month per screen) prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA’s effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended, selected works remain wholly fixated on commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces.
In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA’s video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works of art without any knowledge of their participation.
(Translation: Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art.)
And on a total random note, when I typed the credit links to the photos for Jason Eppink on here I had a total déjà vu feeling and then I realized this person who created the Pixelator also took the photos for the keyboard monument I posted about just yesterday. I totally didn’t even realize the two were the same person until just this moment. Crazy.
I also like this project that was done through a collaboration between Anti-Advertising Agency and Grafitti Research Lab that tries to expose the large numbers of mind-numbing ads plaguing the streets of NYC. They set out to cover up New York City’s video advertising screens with messages like “NYC’s True Graffiti Problem”. Check out the video:
