My Beauty

Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne.

(And how fitting that 'her beauty' be 'altered' somewhat).

A statement of modern times in more ways than one.

February 2010, Ajr

Advertising on the Road

It's been a while since I brought you a little something from my 'bubble car' series. I love these little mini-cars - and the way they have been so readily adopted by such a diverse range of businesses to 'spread the word.' Personally, I'd love to get hold of a couple of these little vehicles and let loose with my own paint brushes. I have some ideas that might stop traffic.

Billboard of the Week

This is what I love about billboards - their ability to transport you some place else, their ability to distort visual reality. This image is so large that at first glance it really does look like there is a woman swimming in a giant tank on the side of an inner city building. It's such an unexpected juxtaposition that you're forced to look twice. That, for me, is a successful advertising campaign - something that makes me look harder, longer and think about possibilities and 'unlikelihoods.'

Words on Walkabout

I am a word collector. As a writer by profession they are ‘the tools of my trade’ of course, but words are SO much more than that to me. It’s about the typography, the shapes and shadows, the forms. It’s about the colour – the same word written in red, blue or green suggests very different things; it’s about the location – a common word transported out of its usual context draws me up short - who put it there, why, what were they intending for me to take from it. And I love a quirky unexpected partnership of words. I get inspiration from them all.

I adore signs. They potentially contain a wealth of humour and an insight into a culture; and billboards for their ability to take words on a gargantuan journey. And then there are the old signs, the old typography – no longer fashionable yet still clinging to the timber and brick facades of the older parts of towns and cities. They tell another whole set of stories with their curly, worn letters – intimate tales of old-fashioned businesses like shoemakers, bookbinders, tailors: good gutsy trades that no longer hold the sway they once had (more’s the pity). The peeling paint, the fading letters, all suggestive of the inherent layers of time and history stacked up between the ‘ms’ and ‘es’ and ‘ys.’

All these things become graphic souvenirs for me. I take photographs, I note down words, phrases, unexpected couplings, I take rubbings, I admire, I gather, I hoard. I have books filled with words. I have handmade books dedicated to ‘word play’ – little typography collages that trigger something deep within my creative processes. Other books are dedicated to ‘words for short stories’, to the fiction-writing processes that for me, often require a very visual starting point and a sustained ‘visual gorging’ to bring an idea to life. That ‘visual research’ is absolutely intrinsic to my creative processes.

And since I’m giving away all my collecting/hoarding secrets, I may as well confess to also collecting old type. Wooden type blocks just DO something to me. I can’t go past them. One of the best birthday presents anyone ever gave me, was a little handmade box with a lid covered in Japanese paper machine-stitched with the letter A (for Adrienne) and inside the box? A collection of wooden A’s. (Thanks Marianne!). I have wooden type ‘prancing’ all around my house – over walls, on mantelpieces, on sideboards. I have old type cases that have been transformed into miniature display cases. And I have a whole set of old lead type – never quite as pretty – which sits quietly in my bedroom corner – chiefly because I can’t lift the box without all the letters spilling out. So there it sits, in the shadows under the old Singer sewing machine that acts as a bedside table, weaving its own silent stories.

Suffice to say, I am surrounded by words and the products they make, advertise and direct – books, signs, type, posters, bookmarks, product boxes, cards, photographs - you name, I’ve probably got it. It goes without saying that this makes for an unusual domestic interior but I’m happy with that. I may have written extensively about expensive contemporary design and architecture but I have no yearnings to live in a glitzy, soulless box that says nothing about its owners and everything about the architect who created it – dwellings where everything is perfect and nothing is out of place. I’m much happier with floor-to-ceiling visual stimuli, in a place of visual chaos in fact, where my eyes can spontaneously come to rest on a giant word roaming across the top of a door frame, or on a quirky shop sign that is so out of place in my kitchen as to be comical. For me, inspiration can come from anywhere; everything communicates; words sing!

Under-Foot

I like this idea - chalk/stencil advertising (restrained advertising that is) on footpaths.

I snapped this outside Underground Coffee in Colombo Street (Christchurch) and I sat awhile and watched. It drew a LOT of attention. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. It adds colour and interest to the otherwise dull walkways.

Signs of the Times

My weakness for signs is well known here.

I photograph them frequently

Always looking for the quirky or the well-designed

The unusual or the misspelled.

I particularly like finding groups of signs that either 'support each other' thematically, or colour-wise; or, as in this case, form totally 'incongruous couplings' that make me smile and think of the nature of chance. I snapped these in Gloucester Street, here in Christchurch.

A Shop Called Swonderful

Wellington

www.swonderful.co.nz

April 2009 Ajr

Three Men Under a Tree

Christchurch July 2009. Ajr What More Can I say?

A Wall in Grey Lynn

Grey Lynn, Auckland. April 2009. Ajr

There's nothing I like more than a wall covered in posters - all that crazy colour and pattern, the layers of graphics and type faces - a frenzy of city activity all there for us to admire, denigrate, anticipate or contemplate. Long live the poster I say! A blot on the landscape for some; tantalising little pockets of visual activity for me.

Vehicle Graphics

Auckland. April 2009. Ajr

Loved this bright Charlie's truck on Ponsonby Road in Auckland.

A much-needed splash of colour on a dull day.

On Sale

MORE

Cool Sale Graphics

Christchurch. March 2009. Ajr

City Graphics

SOL, Christchurch. March 2009. Ajr

One of my favourite inner city poster walls is looking particularly bright and interesting this week. This is one of the walls in SOL Square.

Shark Meets Paper

Manchester Street, Christchurch. Feb 2009. Ajr

I'm obviously missing something here

BUT

I parked behind this truck at the traffic lights the other day and for the life of me I couldn't - and still can't - make the connection between a paper company and a shark!

Sausage Country

Butcher Shop, Kyneton, Victoria, Australia. Nov.2008. Ajr

I find something very entertaining about the simple advertising this rural butcher had chosen to employ. No fancy packaging, no cool fonts, no trendy terminology; just the plain unadulturated sausage facts. Home of the Sausage, simple as that; although I might have suggested he count his varieties more carefully given his own very public contradiction.

City Graphics

SOL Square. Oct 2008. Ajr

I love this tumble of graphics and imagery in SOL Square - posters competing with city signs.

Almost Real

Window Advertisement. Christchurch. Oct. 2008. Ajr

I can't remember what this was an advertisment for - some sort of make-up I think - in Ballantynes window. I was drawn to it because the (original) photograph seems (to me) to capture the very essence of the model.

My Cry To Editors Everywhere..............

Rental Shed Company, Christchurch. Oct. 2008. Ajr

Thought For the Day

a little bit wonderful

every day

A bookstore with the right idea

Billboard of the Week

Blenheim Road, Christchurch. Sept. 2008. Ajr

Here's another in D.A Lewis's 'Furniture for Every Occasion' series.

Put 'Advertising with a Roar' into the blog search box above left and you'll see my other favourite in this quirky animal series.

Brewery Billboards

New Brighton, Christchurch. Sept. 2008. Ajr

Another brewery taking its advertising cue from current events.

In this case, a play on the collapse of yet another finance company.