ESPO Rain Coats

New York graffiti Artist ESPO made the New York Times magazine this week. He saw a man wearing a vinyl banner that had been fashioned into a raincoat, and was inspired to make raincoats into art, or art into raincoats, depending how you look at it.

ESPO also known as Steve Powers, is showing at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco into November.

50 Cent billboards removed

Movies about inner city violence are bad, but movies glorifying war are great. That's why the billboards for "Get Rich or Die Trying" are being removed. I can't help wondering though, wouldn't it be better to just replace the gun with a something, like Steven Spielberg did in the 20th Anniversary of E.T to save the children?....which interestingly is quite contrary to his approach in using the post 911 fear to fuel his last movie.

Sign of the Week: 4

In the tradition of the approaching All Hallows Eve, I found this online catalog of Hammer Films movie posters.
Pictured here is a German print for The Legend of Hellhouse(1973)

Bask

Bask is the moniker of one, Ales Bask Hostomsky, who along with his parents emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Florida and began to soak up America’s popular iconic imagery along with the sun. He quickly began to notice similarities between the communistic iconic propaganda from his youth and the consumer advertising of his teens. Bask soon discovered that they were simply, two sides of the same coin. Each vying for our short-lived attention spans, all the while selling us (or telling us?) anything and everything from Marxism to McDonalds. Seeking conspiracies –and finding them embedded in the popular iconography of the mass media, Bask began painting bold, media critical broadsides to assuage his fear of being manipulated. A fear cultivated in a repressive regime, had now returned, but to the most unlikely and safest of places- The American living room.

Sign of the Week: 3

Sign of the week number three comes from Tian at
Hanzi Smatter, a site dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in western culture. The guy in the photo above wanted a tattoo that read "Courage" in Chinese. The tattoo he received actually says "Big Mistake" or possibly "Dog Mistake"


If you like this post, check these out:
engrish
the joys of engrish
lost in translation

this post via lost in translation....

character week three not ve Tian with Hanzi Smatter, a place, that
it est dedicated Chinese abuse character fotographia occidental person
cultivation. exij type on a Tattooing, that t l "Courage"
Chinese Tatoo, that t received, visualiz Real that "Big
Mistake" or posssibly "Dog Mistake"

Sign Language

No Parking on the Dance Floor by Darwin Bell

This Saturday, I spent the early part of my evening with Violet and Jackson at Litquake, an anual literary event that features hundreds of authors reading in every bar and cafe along Valencia street. While bouncing from reading to reading, at the Chronicle Book's host venue Den, I spotted the work of Darwin Bell. His Polaroids of signs are strategically and beautifully mounted to form phrases. So if a picture is worth a thousand words, then is a picture of a word worth a thousand and one?

other things I did and saw this weekend:
De Young Reopening Celebration
Hideo Wakamatsu
Headland Open house
Yoon Lee
Mike Arcega

Sign of the Week: 2

Last week I started "Sign of the Week", which I plan to post every Wednesday. It will feature a picture of a sign or signs that I find interesting on some level. If you have any tips or submissions that you think fit, let me know. I'll link back and give you credit for your work.




The best visual example of poetic justice that I've seen in a while.

This week's sign comes from SirWalter of the UK at
Polka Dot Holes. I highly recommend clicking through his archives.

Blackmail!

Edwin Gore from the cult of Shinra has posted a flickr photo set of a recent public art peice in Colorado Springs from the art group Chaos Studios.
All over the down town area black mail boxes have been installed with messages of blackmail on them. When I first saw the pictures I was a little more excited, because I thought someone had actually commited a fellony and defaced federal property.

via:
boingboing


Other notable things that Colordao Springs is famous for:

High Voltage Saxophone

Garden of the Gods

Pit Magazine/Moshpit Records

Peterson Air Force Base Now with more NORAD!

Focus on the Family Cult

Etched in Stone

Etched in Stone, is another great flash short from font geek Cheshire Dave and illustrator Julie Giles. It's a Hollywood murder mystery, with a surprise twist ending. What does this have to do with signs? I can only tell you that this film has killer fonts.

previous:
Behind the Type Face Cooper Black

Sign of the Week: 1

Title: Traffic Flower Glut (1987)
Artist: Robert Rauschenberg

Want to buy it? click here for details:
Sotheby's [New York]

Sign Painter Flicker Pool

A great collection of pictures of hand painted signs. The hand-turned letter is nearly a lost art, even though the asthetic can't be matched by vinyl graphics or digital output.

Graffiti "how-to"

Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions..or B.U.G.A. U.P.
has been correcting billborads since 1979, in Australia.
on their "how-to" page you can learn how to make a paint bomb, and a spray can extention rod.

For the most comprehensive guide to the alteration of outdoor advertising check out The Art & Science of Billboard Improvement on the BLF site.

For more on Australian "Billboard Busting" see the piece at Adbuster's site on the The Lonely Station