No disrespect to any citizen, but it remains the ugliest city I've ever seen. Pure random concrete chaos.
Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
261–270 of 428 posts
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#262This is a great policy for the city but this killed half of Liberdade's soul, because our little Tokyo had to also pull down all our their Japan-evoking signage. See a sample of the neighborhood in the 80s: https://quandoacidade.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/238.jpg
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#263I often find myself coming back to this piece from Sean Tejaratchi which was partly stolen by Banksy – https://web.archive.org/web/20120314093434/http://www.readin...
Minor anecdote: During the pandemic a lot of the billboards and bus stops around me suddenly didn't have advertisements plastered on them any more, and it made my daily commute a lot calmer. No longer were sudden blobs of highly saturated colours and popping text dragging my attention away from me, and I'd do a lot of things to have that back. At least AdBlock is a thing in the digital domain.
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The things you mention are media, and that world is heavily loaded with advertising. Other industries have it but it isn’t attention whoring trash, it’s more subtle. The free coffee at a conference, the rep dropping by to say hello. The brand name on the pens. The strong views against advertising are a very logical reaction to the obnoxious methods used.
Yep totally agree. This is part of why I’m not against all advertising, and you’re also highlighting reasons why we shouldn’t allow being against the invasive media ads to be framed as or considered to be a radical stance.
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm from Florianópolis and everyone I know hates that stupid billboard - it goes against the natural vibe of the city. In person it's an eye sore from kilometers away.
Not directly related, but it's so cool that three different people from Florianópolis have commented! I don't think I'd ever meet someone from that part of Brazil in my normal life. That's a little bit of internet magic
I was also taken aback tbh. But it makes sense considering Florianópolis is one of Brazil's major tech hubs.
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not a very good argument. Putting aside the present topic, this argument doesn't address the substance and instead lazily falls back on an association fallacy: "if people said P about A in the past and we no longer think that, and you say P about B, then you must also be wrong". It's the same kind of progressive argument people use when they categorically dismiss any criticism of new music as just the same old…
> It assumes the premise that art cannot be bad The difference is that pieces of art can be bad, but you’re going to have to do a lot more work to dismiss an entire set of categories of art. Even the examples of Warhol, Dali, etc. are individual artists, not an entire medium. Imagine arguing that there are exactly zero good pieces of software written in JavaScript bc JavaScript is a bad language.
When people say "it's bad so it's not art", they're challenging artistic value, essentially the same as what any art critic does. A cultured art critic who says "this is kitsch crap" and an unsophisticated man off the street who says "this crap isn't art" are both people expressing their dissatisfaction with the work. One expresses his thoughts in a way that is 'technically wrong' if taken literally and the other expresses his thoughts with jargon that is inaccessible to the general public.
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Graffiti is usually tagging [1], but includes other forms of (non-sanctioned) random acts of art and, especially, writing. Wall murals are usually sanctioned – either there is permission granted to paint a wall, or, often, they are commissioned. Usually there is only one artist or company that makes the "complete" mural, with much planning and coordination, and no intervention by casual passerby. In the source below,…
This seems like a separation that's a little too clean to fit reality. Does that hard line of distinction really exist? Certainly there are clear examples on both ends of the spectrum, but here's some closer to the boundaries of your definition from my own hometown - I wonder how you'd classify these: 1. This street of sanctioned individual pieces, mostly "tags" but elaborate full-wall pieces each by an individual ta…
I'd use my "especially writing" heuristic here to separate the two – graffiti comes from the Greek root "graph" (to write), right? So even though 1 contains elaborate and beautiful full wall pieces, I would still consider them "graffiti," especially because they seem spontaneous productions by citizens (taking back the architecture of the city into their own hands!) and not commissioned by an agency.
The involvement of the ad agency (i.e., an institution of some sort) and lack of writing would make 2 certainly not graffiti, despite the subversion of the law. We could call it vandalism, actually. Beautiful vandalism in the form of a wall mural!
The trickiest to define is something like the Berlin wall – if I'm not mistaken, the city gave permission for anyone to come draw/tag to their hearts' content all along portions of a wall. Does permission make it not graffiti? Some would say yes. Personally, I disagree – if it is writing rather than drawings, I still consider it graffiti, minus any perjorative associations of the word. Grafitti is an art form too.
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#268Some additions: Stores also cannot use their full façade for advertising. Branding colors and details are OK, but logos cannot be too large (don't know the exact rule). The law is picky. Some stores cheat by having a glass façade, and using LEDs inside that glass. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/CLdUD1C Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years la…
Full-building graphite are one of the hallmarks of downtown Belo Horizonte. I remember as a kid seeing some of those impressive, surrealistic images. They made a big impression on me, I wish I knew who the artist(s) was/were.
Same! You are probably thinking about the murals by Hugues Desmaziéres (and Douglas Melo) [1][2]. Seeing those murals in the 90s really excited my imagination as a kid.
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In San Francisco there are building murals throughout the city. I quite like them! I'm not sure if there are murals in the richest neighborhoods (Pacific Heights) or the less dense, more suburban neighborhoods (Sunset, Richmond), but there are murals throughout the dense neighborhoods near downtown. (SOMA, the Mission, Haight, etc.)
A lot of murals in some towns in North Carolina too ... here's a sampling from Winston-Salem ... https://www.verbalgoldblog.com/best-wall-murals-instagrammab...
Re: Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
#270As an individual, I'd welcome no advertisements everywhere. I think ads were abused long enough. It's just a leech on the human life.
I am almost the opposite. The busy signage is one of my favorite things about Hong Kong. I wish more cities were like that.
It's certainly something that made Tokyo stand out among other cities even 20 years ago, before huge digital billboards ads became commonplace everywhere.
I'm not super bothered by most advertising, it's only shouty/ cringeworthy TV ads and online ads that block content and are for products I have no interest in (often products that I've just bought, but logically aren't going to need again for a long while) that I'd love to see banished.