Why billboards are bad

Full disclosure, I have been guilty of this sin myself on more than one occasion. Too many design elements. Also, a single large photo is nearly always preferable to multiple small ones. Condensed or hard to read fonts. They may seem cool or fun, but if they get in the way of readability, they are probably a bad choice. Lack of contrast. Headline fonts need to stand out from the background for maximum visual impact.

Environmental considerations. One time we designed a very nice billboard for a client but it had one unintended flaw. I couldn't possibly explain it better myself. I hope Valon reposts his essay with a rewrite so we can start discussing his point and not why he yanked the original.

Many billboards are ugly. I suspect it's for the same reasons that many local 30 second TV spots are ugly; you buy the time or space and the design and production get thrown in for nothing. Hard to overthrow that model. As for the controversy He's man enough to admit a mistake and sends out personal apologies as well.

In my book, his character was never an issue. Here's a fun juxtaposition. The bad thing about billboards… is that you are shooting for the absolute lowest denominator.

First of all, you have a huge audience, as in everybody that walks or drives by it, then if it's on a highway, well, people are going really really fast while eating a McMuffin or shaving or listening to books on tape, not to mention that the majority of people can't see very well. So, billboards have to really pop! And how do you make billboards "pop"? Well, you make images big, type big, colors colorful and then it, magically, pops. I have never ever seen a billboard I have reacted to positively.

Not even those clever ones that get included in CommArts advertising annuals. Maybe a smirk, but that's about that. They are intrusive, obnoxious and seldomly well-designed. Billboards are a mixed blessing, like all advertising. I know I have though road signage often points to these things on major arteries anyway I'd probably prefer life without them, generally speaking, but unless you live in Maine, Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont, they probably aren't going anywhere speaking as a US citizen about my home country's tendency to put an ad on anything it can.

How about outside the US? Are there countries out there that specifically ban them? A little grist for the mill it's a bit long, but since we're missing an article now Armin, feel free to chop this if yr so inclined :. The billboard industry can hardly plead innocence in the face of such indictments: its own manual, Essentials of Outdoor Advertising [ To counteract such competition every bit of the poster space must be made to work hard. Although anti-billboard arguments are, at present, likely to be most effective when advanced on grounds of highway safety, the esthetic argument seems to be gaining adherents.

This became evident during the Great Billboard Battle of referred to earlier, which was fought almost exclusively on esthetic grounds. That battle was a memorable occasion. It was memorable because it represented the first instance in our history that the federal legislature faced up to the problems presented by the systematic "uglification" of the United States by one single-minded private enterprise.

It was memorable, too, because after all the rhetoric had died down, the net result of this valiant effort was a feeble compromise. The late Senator Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon, supported by other conservationists, proposed that the federal govermnets should keep billboards off highways constructed with federal aid. Their arguments were somewhat lacking in imagination, considering that those who advanced them were supposed experts in the art of persuasion: "If our country is to be strong Still, behind the scenes, the billboard lobby was beginning to play rough.

Despite the sorry public showing of its spokesmen, and despite the wide support which the proposed billboard ban received in newspapers and magazines, President Eisenhower a man of good will, and an amateur artist to boot could only muster a helpless sigh: "I am against those billboards that mar our scenery," he said, "[but] I don't know what I can do about it.

I agree But I have to admit that I love the Chik-a-Fila billboard with the cows. I just can't help it. You must be down south, Deanna. And, yes, those cows crack me up too. I just got back from a tour of Alabama and Florida. Besides the crazy cows, I'm always amused by the string of bible belt billboards proclaiming Go to Church or Go to Hell in Helvetica bold, reversed from black.

Then there's the ever popular Talk to me today. And this one really brought a tear to my eye. I live in Vermont. We don't have billboards. In fact, you can't build any sign or storefront that is visible from the Interstate.

Everytime I leave VT I quickly get used to seeing billboards again and even enjoy the novelty to me of them. Sort of the haiku of graphic design just to offer a conceptual alternative to lowest common denominator. But when I return I am always glad to drive and actually see the landscape without the billboards.

Ah, yes I happen to live in what is considered the buckle of the bible belt so I know all about God's billboard campaign. The only thing better? Church signs. I've been collecting photos of them for some time now. I'm awaiting a billboard of that any day now. I'm all disorientated. The thread is gone? Why bother replacing it then?

So now we have a thread talking about the previous thread that was pulled? OK, as for good billboard use, the Walker has been commisioning artists to design a billboard in Minneapolis:. Lately I've been noticing a more insidious form of visual pollution - the banner flag. It's a thinly veiled attempt to celebrate something through sponsorship. A quarter of the space is reserved for the celebration message while the remaining three quarters of space is used up by the sponsor.

It's getting out of hand where I live. They're everywhere and they aren't enhancing the environment at all. Nay, billboards don't suck per se. They are typically unattractive, yes. Saying billboards suck is like saying TV sucks. It just so happens that so much sucky material is put on TV. But once in a while you see something worthwhile. I think the same ios true for billboards.

Perhaps a truer statement would be that billboard advertising sucks. I agree. That god billboard is priceless.

Back in my hometown where the dude was fired for heckling bush there's a guy who has a big backlit movie-style marquee sign which usually contains a daily dime of religious wisdom "don't let evolution make a monkey out of you," etc. I Romanticize of the days when Billboards where actually Hand Painted. I've actually seen a landmark historically significant hand painted Coca Cola billboard restored. In the neighborhood where I grew up in Chicago, there was an old green house, much in need of repair, located on an immensely busy street.

The front yard was a plot of grass about 10' by 10', with a billboard pole directly in the center of it. The billboard stoop imposingly high about that house and displayed various ads throughout the years.

I remember passing that house in the car and on foot many times growing up, and I became obsessed with it. I kept wondering if someone lived there, and why they had a billboard in their front lawn. I would see lights on inside and strain to see the occupants, wondering if they recieved the profits of the billboard.

If they did, why didn't they move, or at least fix up their house? If they rented, I wondered if their rent was extremely low, because who would want to live under a billboard? I wondered why the owners didn't tear down the house in the first place? I've always wanted to ring that doorbell and get the answers to all my questions. Cookie Declaration About Cookies. Necessary 0 Marketing 0 Analytics 0 Preferences 0 Unclassified 0. Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website.

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