The crew was out in the middle of the night on Overland Ave. in West L.A., installing this five-story ”inflatable” supergraphic sign that’s part of a $100 milllion-plus advertising campaign signaling McDonalds’ forayinto the upscale coffee market dominated by Starbucks and a handful of other chains.
The building previously sported a supergraphic ad for designer jeans, which wasn’t removed, but covered up by the faux brick of the McCafe sign. Last year, the company that installed the ads, World Wide Rush, got an injunction from a U.S. District Court Judge barring the city from enforcing its ban on supergraphic ads at the location.
According to an advertising industry publication, McDonalds spent $825 million last year on advertising on TV, radio, the internet and billboards and other outdoor advertising venues. To tell McDonalds (for whatever its worth) what you think of their marketing campaign, click here.
The El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Blvd. opened in 1926, and was the site of many star-studded events, including the world premiere of “Citizen Kane” in 1941. It later fell on hard times, but in the late Eighties the Walt Disney Co. and Pacific Theaters teamed up to do a complete restoration, and it has since been the venue for premieres of Disney feature films.
Before The Supergraphic
The theater, built by the same real estate developer who built the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the Chinese Theater, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And like the hotel, also a registered historic landmark, the building has been draped with a huge supergraphic sign that obscures much of its architecture.
The owners of the hotel, just down the street from the theater, and the sign company, In Plain Sight Media, recently sued the city seeking the right to keep the unpermitted supergraphic sign in place.More on Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
The owners of the El Capitan theater donated a “conservation easement” to the Los Angeles Conservancy, which is essentially an agreement not to make any exterior modifications to the building that don’t meet historic preservation standards. This easement is considered a charitable donation, and is typically used by owners of historic properties to claim significant tax deductions.
Too Tall Jahmal and Augor sound off about graffiti's usage of public space and particularly in relation to illegal billboard signage in LA. Jahmal says "The billbaords in my mind, inspired graffiti...it's only natural for a kid to go, 'Hey, I wanna logo too'". And the result is the liberation of these private billboards, brand locations and logo placeholders, by the very graffiti that they inspired. Fantastic.
What Invites, and What Alienates Us in Our Shared Public Spaces
The following quote comes from Ban Billboard Blight's response to "a response by Stuart Magruder to a March 26 article in the L.A. Times titled 'L.A.’s Great Signage Debate' by architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne." Amazing. It also happens to be an eloquent summary of the difference between place signage and advertising, sometimes referred to as first party signage and third party signage.
"The more insidious mistake that Mr. Hawthorne makes is his assessment of what is and what is not advertising. He rolls into one category the “thrillingly tall billboards…on the Sunset Strip” with the Hollywood sign, the LAX sign, the address numbers on the Caltrans building, and several others. Unfortunately, only the fist example - the billboards on Sunset Strip - is advertising; the rest are place signs, not advertising. The difference between billboards and place signs is crucial. The first and most obvious difference: place signs are about the place they adorn. They refer to themselves or to the building that they are on. The best ones, such as the Hollywood sign (which started its life as a billboard for “Hollywoodland” but now designates the place both physically and culturally), are landmarks, helping us get around the city and understand where we are. Billboard advertising is just the opposite. It is placeless; it disorients. There is no connection to what is advertised and where the billboard is located. Billboards make us lose our way in the city as the same product is advertised all over."
Advocates of advertising's removal from public space do not wish for an austere environment, free from anything but boring brick walls and sheer facades. In fact the opposite is often true. It is the selfish nature of advertising's use of public space that is at the heart of our complaint. Instead we advocate the removal of the selfish with replacement by the personal, individual, and inherently altruistic acts of peoples invested in their space for reasons other than profit. Personal interaction with public space often leads to moments of grand visual elegance, teeming with life affirming qualities that stand out against the background of the city. Unlike a billboard whose advertising content we shrink away from, public use of public space is revelatory and engrossing.
The above image by WK Interact once created a physical place in the city that truly inspired me. It was replaced some years after its creation by an advertisement and the entire corner lost it's identity.
Eduardo Moises Penalver & Sonia Kaytal Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership Barbara Ehrenreich Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy Lewis Hyde The Gift, Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World Geoffrey Miller Spent: Sex, Evolution, & Consumer Behavior Sharon Zukin The Cultures of Cities Miriam Greenberg Branding New York Naomi Klein No Logo Kalle Lasn Culture Jam Stuart Ewen Captains of Consciousness Stuart Ewen All Consuming Images Stuart & Elizabeth Ewen Channels of Desire Jeff Ferrell Crimes of Style Jeff Ferrell Tearing Down the Streets John Berger Ways of Seeing Joe Austin Taking the Train Rosalyn Deutsche Evictions art + spatial politics Jane Jacobs Death+Life of American Cities
