BUY MORE THINGS

IDEA

What would happen if two staples in graphic design history - the billboard and the protest placard - merged?

This project challenges and critiques the history of commercial billboards by using the history of protest placards to satirize the former. The aim therefore is to use two distinct pieces of graphic design history, combine them, and create something new from it.

Concept

On a daily basis, attention is taken away from us in our public spaces - by commercial billboards, posters, and signage. They are also, somewhat comically, quite demanding and authoritative: buy this, buy that, use this service. It is easy to see this as a form of colonialism. The consumerist ideals are invading and colonizing our shared spaces.

This project attempts to challenge the capitalist hegemony (of which much of commercial graphic design stems), by creating a design in the style of a protest placard and have it superimposed on a commercial billboard. Physically.

It is so easy to take consumerism as a matter of fact, but modern consumerism have existed for less than 0.1% of human history. The waste it creates, the exploitation of resources, the burden it puts on the planet is exhausting. This design attempts to question materialistic values and how they not only can harm the environment, but also our communities and relationships.

This design is an attempt to use substitution in three ways. Firstly it's a literal and physical substitution of the billboard itself. Secondly it's a substitution that plays with the reader's expectation; it's a surprise to view this text. Lastly it's a substitution in that it is ironic (no commercial billboard is deliberately ironic onto itself); it challenges the consumerist society and all of us taking part in it.

Lastly, the design aims to critique the physical aspect of commercial billboards. In our shared spaces of the city these signs are stealing our attention. Specifically those that are erected for the sole purpose of having a commercial or advertisement on them. It is challenging the viewer to question the billboard structure itself.

Is it benefiting anyone living here? Who and what is it for?