The Zimbabwean is a newspaper produced by a group of exiled Zimbabwean journalists. It is sold in the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe but in the latter it attracts an import tax that renders the average Zimbabwean unable to afford a copy.

The newspaper and South African creative agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris have created a series of ads -- wall murals, billboards and flyers -- in Johannesburg using the Z$100 trillion dollar note. This incredible denomination is a poignant symbol of the country's world record inflation.

The campaign hopes to encourage more sales of the paper in South Africa, thereby subsidizing the cost of the paper to Zimbabweans, while simultaneously raising awareness of the dire situation in the country under the Mugabe regime.

The "Trillion Dollar Campaign" Billboard for The Zimbabwean newspaper. Check out more photos at the newspaper's Flickr photostream.

Via the Creative Review and Veer: Ideas.

For those who can't make out the French, they're advertising their paint recycling policy.

RONA capitalizes on a design trope in a billboard for the iPod nano.

I'm not sure this is intentional, but this ad can also serve the purpose as a funny and subtle jab at Apple's well-known less-than-green design practices.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again. Designing a restrained billboard might be rare, and even culturally antonymic, but when it's done right, it's incredibly effective.

Billboard Advertisement for the Denver Water Public Utility

Here, the Denver Water Public Utility takes the Eskom strategy one step further, actually chopping their billboard down to about 20% of its allotted size. This is not only highly effective because it capitalizes negatively on our perceptual fluency for billboards, but it's also quite apropos to the content. Nicely done.

Billboard Advertisement for the BIC

Secondly, this incredible billboard for BIC razors makes excellent use of many of the principles we at DLB hold dear. Specifically, (1) the aforementioned confounding of perceptually fluent expectations, (2) the Power of Profiles (here, capitalizing on the unique and recognizable shape of the BIC disposable razor), (3) the judicious use of the context/environment of the design, and finally (4) a very interesting (sculptural) complication of the figure-ground relationship.^*

All these excellent factors add up to an almost completely blank billboard. Chew on that.

^* Please note also my near-giddiness that this billboard allows me a second occasion to use the Claes Oldenberg tag.