On Saturday, I proposed something to ponder over the weekend. Namely, I suggested that we all think, over the weekend about the possibilities of a brand and design strategy that takes into account multiple degrees of control, in the various registers of user experience.

This is a deep and complicated question, and whatever strategies will be used to resolve it will likely involve brand strategies that are downright alien to the ones we know today. Why this might necessarily be the case, I thought, may give us some deeper insight into moving forward on this difficult problem. After all, diagnosis is one thing, treatment is another.

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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.