From Booklist
Our cityscapes and highways are punctuated by billboards' big, splashy images and clever messages designed to sell everything from underwear to cigarettes, milk to athletic wear. Outdoor advertising has become a tradition, and Bernstein surveys this commercial art form from the late nineteenth century on in this colorful, high-energy volume. Being British, his focus is continental, but the U.S. naturally makes a strong showing, and the contrast in transatlantic styles is instructive. Bernstein's earliest examples include the brilliant illustrations and posters of artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha (see boxed review, p.761), who instigated a taste for strongly graphic compositions in outdoor advertising that lasted well into the 1930s and 1940s before the camera finally replaced the artist's hand as the primary medium. Many intriguing trends are traceable both in Bernstein's expert commentary and in contemplating the visual and linguistic puns of contemporary billboards, as images and words compete boisterously for our attention, and styles range from the elegant and soothing to the confrontational and provocative. Donna Seaman
Product Description
Outdoor advertising is one of the oldest and purest forms of communication. From the earliest painted Roman walls to the latest video walls and laser projections in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus, commercial signs have been ubiquitous. This text charts this dynamic exterior medium, looking at the art and ingenuity of art directors and copywriters who devise the artwork and ideas and exploring how their creative input drives an industry that supplies large-scale frames: billboards; transit shelters; bus sides; train cards; 'phone boxes; taxis; airships; and many other locations. Offering the ultimate exposure, outdoor advertising is also seen as the toughest advertising medium. Wherever creators are designing for, they are working within the same limits and unlike newspaper and television advertising there are no accompanying props - the city becomes the context.
