Hasta La Creative!

Advertisers may dominate the lion’s share of America’s billboards, but roadside signs seem to be an increasingly popular medium for artists as well.

A number of billboard installations have been popping up around the country, reports The New York Times. In Missouri, there’s the “I-70 Sign Show,” which seeks to spark political debate with images like a Mickalene Thomas piece on female sexuality.

In Cincinnati, the “Big Pictures” show aims to break up the daily routines of passersby with images like a toucan surrounded by Post-it notes, created by artist Sarah Cwynar. And along cross-country Interstate 10, “The Manifest Destiny Billboard Trip” has since last fall sought to call attention to issues concerning the history of westward expansion, with some 100 signs featuring the work of 10 artists.

Each example offers a bit more art theory and cultural critique than your average billboard. They’re also more modest in scope than the massive “Art Everywhere” initiative launched this summer, which has seen an advertising trade organization team up with a group of major museums to bring more than 50 crowd-curated paintings, including classics like Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, to more than 50,000 outdoor ad spaces.

While the smaller works might not be as inventive as turning billboards into houses for the homeless, they are a nice change of pace from, say, Ashley Madison.

Here’s an idea that could make outdoor advertising not only more attention-grabbing but also more shareable.

Given how many award-show judges were mesmerized by Honda’s mind-bending “Illusions” ad from mcgarrybowen (which won gold at Cannes and the public choice award in The One Show’s Automobile Advertising of the Year), agencies might want to look into the real-world optical awesomeness of reverse perspective.

As you can see in the videos below from British artist Brian Weavers and “reverspective” innovator Patrick Hughes, the painters create 3-D images that seem to shift before your eyes as you look at them from different angles.

While out-of-home marketers have been using 3-D tricks for years, this approach takes it a big step further. Seeing an ad like this would certainly stop you in your tracks and likely even make you pull out your smartphone to shoot some video and blow your friends’ minds.

I couldn’t find many examples of reverse perspective in high-profile ad placements, but let us know in the comments if you know of some beyond the Nokia case study below.

 
To see even more interesting uses of reverse perspective, check out this video featuring the art style’s best-known pioneer, Patrick Hughes:

 
Here’s how Nokia used reverspective to launch the Lumia: