Assignment #2: Billboard

CREATE A BILLBOARD

Starting today and for the next TWO (2) weeks, we will work to produce a billboard using several images, working with masking, merging and text layers.

IDEAS: Your "advertizement" can be for ANYTHING YOU WANT. 

GOAL: to make a convincing case for something (anything) through a visually striking, clever design. You may incorporate text elements or leave them out. You may use found images if you transform them.

EXAMPLES / THEMES: 

- a philosophical concept (World Peace)
- your own artwork or business
- a real product (selling used laptops; publication of a cookbook with your grandmother's recipes)
- a fake, made-up product (robotic goldfish pets; super-peanut butter that makes you smarter....)
- a political cause (Ban Fracking; Promote Internet Freedom; etc, etc)
- something not listed here....

RESEARCH: before embarking on creating your billboard, spend some time looking at both conceptual/public art billboards and actual advertizing billboards online and in the city. Consider their use of text, size, proportions, message, pitch, and methods of manipulating the viewer or subverting conventions. Think about comfort zones and pushing past them. Think about the differences between advertizing, political activism and art.

Here are some sites with examples that you may find invigorating:

CONCEPTUAL / PUBLIC ART
How Many Billboards? Exhibition at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Check out the artists' billboards:
http://www.howmanybillboards.org/artists.html

The Absent Body: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, AIDS, Homosexuality and Representation (The Great Within: desire nostalgia art film photography mass culture)

Takin’ It To The Streets. An Interview With Susan Silton (artpulse)

High Line Art (commissions and produces public art projects on and around the High Line)
http://www.thehighline.org/about/public-art

Article: Billboard Art (Theory Now)

STRAIGHT ADVERTIZING
40 Conceptual Print Ads

25 Inspiring and creative print ads

eyeballnyc



HELP:
If you are feeling stuck, here are a few more [CS5] tutorials that may help:
https://www.adobe.com/support/photoshop/gettingstarted/