São Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising

(page 2 of 2)

Related Items

• Olympics Logo
• Epilepsy Film Storm
• Munich 1972 Olympics logo
• Mexico 1968 Designer Weighs In

Photographer and typographer, Tony de Marco, has been documenting the new, ad-free world of São Paulo, publishing a sequence of images on Flickr.

The city, says de Marco, is starting to feel more "serene".

Story Tools

• post a comment
• e-mail this story
• print this story
• order a reprint
• digg this
• save to del.icio.us

"I can't tell you what it's like to live in a city without ads yet," says Gustavo Piqueira, who runs the studio Rex Design in São Paulo, "because in a lot of places they still haven't been removed. In Brazil, every time that some new law comes in, everybody waits a little to see if it will really be applied and seriously controlled, or if it's just something to fill the newspapers for a week or two."

In a lot of places, Piqueira says, this has led to the removal of posters but not the structures on which they were displayed. "It's a kind of 'billboard cemetery'. I guess they're waiting to see if the law will really last. If the mayor keeps the law for a year or so, people will start to remove them and the city will, finally, start to look better."

Photographer and typographer Tony de Marco has been out documenting this strange hiatus in a sequence of images published on Flickr and used to illustrate this piece. The city, he says, is starting to feel more "serene".

Already the law has led to some strange discoveries. Because the site-ing of billboards was unregulated, many poor people readily accepted cash to have a poster site in their gardens or even in front of their homes. With their removal, a new city is emerging: "Last week, on my way to work, I 'discovered' a house," says Piqueira. "It had been covered by a big billboard for years so I never even knew what it looked like." The removal of the posters has "revealed an architecture that we must learn to be proud of, instead of hiding," says de Marco.

But there are downsides—Piqueira worries that much of the "vernacular" lettering and signage from small businesses—"an important part of the city's history and culture"—will be lost. The organisers of the São Paulo carnival have also expressed concerns about the long-term future of their event now that sponsors will not be allowed to advertise along the route. The city authorities for their part have made it clear that certain public information and cultural works will be exempted from the rules.

After a period of zero tolerance, Piqueira believes that advertising, albeit in a far more regulated form, will start to creep back into the city, either as a result of legal challenges, a change in administration, or compromises between media owners and the city. Already, the council has stated that it would like to see the introduction of approved street furniture such as bus stops, which may well carry ads. As these will no doubt be for the major brands that can afford such lucrative positions, a more sterile, bland visual environment may replace the vibrant, if chaotic streets of the past. Flyposters, hand-lettered signs and club flyers will remain banned while international ad campaigns for global brands on city-approved poster sites will return.

For de Marco, though, "the low quality of the letters and the images on those immense pieces of propaganda" were always a concern, as was "the misuse and occupation of public space. In the weeks before my birthday," he says, "my visual enemies begin to disappear like the happy end of a motion picture. To see my city clean was my best birthday present and my photos were the record of the feast."

Meanwhile, according to Augusto Moya, creative director of ad agency DDB Brasil, the ban is forcing agencies to be more inventive. "As a creative, I think that there is one good thing the ban has brought: we must now use more traditional outdoor media (like bus stops and all kinds of urban fittings) in a more creative way," he says. "People at all the agencies are thinking about how to develop outdoor media that do not interfere so much in the physical structure of the city."

Moya takes an enlightened view of the law. "As a citizen, I think that future generations will thank the current city administration for this ban," he says. "There's still a lot to be done in terms of pollution—air pollution, river pollution, street pollution and so on. São Paulo is still one of the most polluted cities in the world. But I believe this law is the first step for a better future."

And even if some Paulistanos remain unconvinced, there is at least one group who are certainly not complaining—the city's scrap dealers, who are set to make a killing from recovering all the old signs and structures.

Provided by Creative Review—The World's Leading Monthly Magazine for Visual Communication