Advertising in Urban Art: Graffiti & Street Art Marketing

Since Apple is bigger than Microsoft - Yes, it’s true! If you don’t believe, read the newspaper. - and not any longer the small, design-focused computer and software forge, Steve Jobs’ company becomes more and more disliked. In Berlin, recently some ads for Apple’s new flagship, the iPad, were busted. Steve Jobs offers iPad users freedom from porn. And yet the iPads’ measures will offer an unprecedented porn experience. An ad-busting from Berlin Mitte. (johannes-p-osterhoff.com) ...

Some days ago, I asked what do you think “is the deeper meaning of Banksy’s Child Drawing Series? and got a nice answer by Ringo45… Almost at the same time, the Globe And Mail newspaper from Toronto, which was one of Banksy’s traveling-stations, published an very interesting review of the Banksy street art by Toronto street artist Posterchild: Q: As a street artist yourself, what are your feelings about Banksy being in Toronto? A: I would like to have seen Banksy visit Toronto for its own merits and not simply coming to promote his film. Should we feel honored that he’s decided to paint our walls or should we feel outraged that he’s come here … for self-promotion, for advertising? (Globe And Mail) ...

Have you ever heard about the Art Stars project by Ralph Lauren’s Polo Jeans brand? Although the project, which collaborates with some of the most exciting young artistic talents, is already running for some weeks, today was the first time I read something about it… Polo Jeans Co. is proud to present Art Stars, a showcase of work from 51 of Europe’s most recognized up and coming contemporary artists. Inspired by the iconic American Star Spangled Banner and synonymous with the Polo Jeans Co. brand, the artists will create 3D pieces on stars made from the finest American denim. These will be displayed in select Polo Jeans Co. stores in key cities across Europe, before coming together in a public exhibition in London in late 2010. (Introducing Art Stars) ...

Some days ago, I received an e-mail from French urban artist and adbuster Ox and I have to say, that I didn’t know him before, but really like his nice artworks! For years, Ox pastes great collages or minimalist shapes over billboards and in that way creates new, often colorful statements. His billboard takeovers - he calls it “Affichages” - could be found all over France and in other European cities like London. To cut a long story short and to show you his great doings, here are some photos… ...

The Adidas Urban Art Guide is an iPhone application which makes it possible for you to find interesting street art spots. It’s like an interactive city art guide and started with a urban shoe rallye in Berlin one year ago. Back then, about 50 street artists, including Emess, Evol, Klub7, Pisa73 and Mymo, hijacked the release with their Dirty Dancing Sneaker Action. Now the service will also be available in Hamburg! “The city is a gallery. The adidas Urban Art Guide is the catalog. When Urban Art entered the scene, art left the galleries. Their characters populate the whole urban landscape. Especially in a young and international city like Berlin they follows us at every turn like a second population. ...

Almost every bigger fashion label used street art or graffiti for their commercials or got directly in contact with international urban art protagonists in the last years. A few already have their own gallery! Street art is popular and for this reason en vogue. Also jeans fabricator Levi’s goes with the trend and brought two well-known urban artists on board of its advertising campaigns in the last weeks. On the one hand, Shepard Fairey made a whole poster series - the Levi’s collaboration graphics - in his famous Obey-style and on the other hand, KR designed some jeans and jackets for them. ...

Some days ago, I told you about the spectacular adbusting by urban artists in Berlin. About 20 different urban artists took over so called citylight-posters with their artworks and made in this way a wide street art group-exhibition in public-space, called Nothing but Quality Street. But how did they do that? In Berlin Mitte, Kreuzberg and Neukölln it’s almost impossible to do such a big action they did. Because of the high number of arson attacks by left-winged autonomists, there’s a very high police appearance. ...

My friend Martin from the online platform for contemporary urban art “LetterXIII” asked me to post some infos and photos about the urban art group-exhibition and advertising takeover “Nothing but…”, which took place in Berlin some days ago. About 20 different urban artists took over so called citylight-posters with their artworks between Mitte and Neukölln. Involved on this wonderful, temporary adbusting action were for example Evol, Bronco, Brad Downey, Filippo Minelli, Akim, Laurent Basset and many more! ...

What do you think about the “Lorem Ipsum” placeholder text? I love it, and today i read an article about Zoe McCloskey from Chicago, who used this fake-seeming Latin designers use to mock up designs for a street art project. (“Fake-seeming”, because it is not really a fake text, but ask Wikipedia for more!) She pastes sentences like “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr.” on walls and billboards to stimulate people to think about the meaning of words. But read yourself, what Unurth has learned from her: ...