Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#221

Post by landgenoot » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:01 PM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #217

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most public advertisement is for consumption goods - food, clothes, tech gadgets etc. 1. People have mostly fixed amounts of money for these products. So the role of ads is to influence which brands/products people spend their money on. 10-20% of the cost of coke/pepsi cans is just the cost of ads that are used to influence you buy one of two almost identical products. 2. Ads total waste of society's productive power…

> 10-20% of the cost of coke/pepsi cans is just the cost of ads I think this is an important point. If coke and pepsi were not allowed to advertise, they could only compete on price and quality. This is clearly a win for consumers. For coke and pepsi, maybe a small to moderate loss of revenue? But then their costs would definitely go down (no advertising spend), so it wouldn't necessarily be a net loss even for them.

And you have 20% spare budget to pay digital services, which are now full of ads.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#222

Post by gumby » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #114

kibwen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years later, it is more likely to see one of these nowadays than an empty outdoor frame Nearly all of these look like murals, not graffiti (these are distinct forms of street art). Regardless, those photos are beautiful and I'd love to have those instead of billboards in my city.

Are building murals not associated with ghettos outside the US? Where I live you know if you start seeing big faces on walls you're in the bad part of town and need to be careful.

I have lived in the US (on and off) for decades and have not made this association you describe. It's also common in many European cities, often in middle class neighborhoods.

Palo Alto has street murals scattered around the city in commercial districts and some private homes.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#223

Post by mcpackieh » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

mymythisisthis wrote: post #214

mcpackieh wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they do careful analysis of statues and find evidence of pigmentation, but obviously they're only looking at the remnants of the base coat and don't see any of the careful detailing that almost certainly went towards making these statues look very lifelike (judging by the realistic quality of the sculpture itself.) And so the recreations look flat and uncanny because they're essentially unfinished.

I wonder if another problem might be fashion trends. Sometimes bright, contrasting, colours are in style and feel normal. https://www.apparelsearch.com/terms/images/cher-aerobics-leg...

I don't think the bright colors are the problem, just the opposite actually.

Particularly in this example: https://static.frieze.com/files/inline-images/web-cg-h-102-a...

The bright clothes are fine, but his skin is awful. It's flat and lifeless, like a cold corpse drained of blood. It looks like they put the primer coat on then left it unfinished; I think that's literally what they did. Maybe this look is what they were originally going for, but I don't think so. Look at the detail on that guy's knees, they look just like real knees. I don't believe the original artists went through so much trouble to sculpt hyper-realistic knees then let some intern half-ass the paint job.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#224

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #142

bkraz wrote: post #74

I recently learned Kyoto has rules about signage and specifically color saturation. Some of the rules seem too detailed, but the end result looks very nice. https://youtu.be/KuX3nu4jdo0

THIS. High saturation colors are loud and tacky. Kyoto look wonderful.

I've applied a desaturation filter to a number of websites. The Register for example:

  body {
      /* A little less bloody red, eh? */
      filter: saturate(33%);
  }

(Via the Stylus CSS manager extension.)

I also browse extensively on an e-ink (monochrome) tablet, and find that the lack of high-saturation colour is very welcome. I suspect that even colour-based e-ink displays, given their muted pastel palette, might also be an improvement in general.

Edit: That's Stylus, not Stylish, as I'd initially written, Which has Gone To The Dark Side.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#225

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

tomalaci wrote: post #93

I feel like this kind of strategy would work for cities with buildings that have artistic facade but would backfire immensely for those that dont.

It might also encourage adoption of more decorative facades amongst the latter.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#226

Post by input_sh » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:07 PM UTC

kattagarian wrote: post #164

tobr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d take ugly street art over ugly advertisement. At least it’s not trying to manipulate you.

at least advertisement is not made on the wall of your house without your consent

Yeah, but it's thrown inside my mailbox without my consent instead.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#227

Post by dahart » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #211

dahart wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s considered a radical stance I don’t think so. I think business wants us to feel that way, while the average person would choose to not hear/watch/see ads given the choice. I’m not necessarily against advertising, and regardless it’s a fact that advertising drives our economy and as a whole we generally don’t know how to create and conduct business without advertising. But I am against the notion that not wan…

> it’s a fact that advertising drives our economy Is it really though? I could believe that advertising does incentivize people to buy things that they otherwise might not. But OTOH, if there were no advertising, people would still spend money, just differently. It's not as though people are going to start lighting money on fire in the absence of advertising.

I think so, in part. To be clear I’m not claiming it’s the only driver, nor the largest, but it’s undeniably large nonetheless. Consider that Google’s entire search existence is funded by ads, and there’s loads of competition. Basically all of TV and a lot of online streaming is ad funded. Magazines and radio and print media all get large portions of revenue via ads.

I agree people would still spend money in a world without ads, but we don’t currently have that world, right?

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#228

Post by philwelch » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

thebradbain wrote: post #169

Luctct wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see, you just said that "We just don’t have the tools yet to objectively define beauty" and "Boston City Hall is objectively an awful building" (and holy shit, it really is awful) in the same paragraph! Don't you see the contradiction? In another comment here, someone said, "I'm not arguing for or against that - I'm just stating a fact (...) I find it extremely ugly." Hey, "I find it extremely ugly" IS arguing ag…

Unpopular opinion, but Boston City Hall is an objectively VERY beautiful building. Brutalism is absolutely an acquired taste, but it is, by all measures, an objective style that can be measured against, in the same way classical or say, Spanish Mission architecture style is. In fact, some would even go so far as to argue that most Victorian/neo-classical architecture is just a chintzy facade with no real architectura…

Boston City Hall is a sublime architectural expression of the maxim, “you can’t fight city hall”. It’s an inhuman, authoritarian concrete bunker that makes the citizen feel lower than rat shit. Its highest artistic purpose would be if it were demolished with high explosives to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#229

Post by earthboundkid » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

There are a number of areas in the US that ban billboards, including Hawaii and Vermont.

Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

#230

Post by mcpackieh » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

fesoliveira wrote: post #153

Aerroon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those murals look much worse than advertisements to me. I guess there's less incentive to maintain them.

Well, good thing art is subjective. To me these are leagues better than ads and they bring social commentary and inspiration far more than any ad. It's one of the few things I am proud of as someone who lived in the state of Sao Paulo for a good chunk of my life.

> they bring social commentary

In other words, they're propaganda. At least in the case of graffiti with social commentary, anybody can go out there and put their message up. Murals with social messages are propaganda sanctioned by the property owner, or even commissioned by the government, making it establishmentarian propaganda that pretends to be transgressive by adopting the superficial form of unsanctioned graffiti. Such murals are tacky and inauthentic; scrawled gang signs have more soul.