Charlie Bowden – 27th September 2011
With my first blog post (almost anywhere) looming I spent yesterday considering topics, should I pick an existing ad and critique it? Should I give you a run through of my first week at SCA? Does this even need to be about advertising?
I decided to give you a small insight into how I think.
I’ve long collected photos of things that, stumbling upon, I liked and felt worthy of keeping. One subject slowly turning into a series, are blank billboards.
Very rarely do I see an ad on a billboard that stops me in my tracks with the urge to take a photo, but that’s always my reaction to that pale blue paper.
In the (well-documented) over-communicated world we live surely it says something that a blank billboard jumps out demanding more attention from me than the daily onslaught of ad carrying ones?
This led me to think; although they failed in selling to or informing the public have they done something, that is, albeit accidentally, more virtuous and caring? Have they given us a little time to think?
JCDecaux and Clear Channel probably don’t think like this, looking no further than the lost revenue but there’s something refreshing in these blank billboards. They offer a moment to stop, a time to reflect and relax. Looking at them gives me a feeling similar to the moment you turn off your television and hear the crackling static on the screen and the electricity cease, a moment to wind down.
Pale blue is proven a calming colour, maybe I’m romanticising it but I love to think this was conscious decision. Somewhere in some boardroom it was decided that when these billboards were not in use, when there was no brand wanting your attention, they would be used to project clam to their little corner of the world.
