I wanted to share this great video I came across recently. It’s really more of a short documentary on the art of painting outdoor advertisements. It’s probably considered a dying art form as these days most large scale outdoor advertisements are printed on vinyl and put up in a short few hours – which is obviously more time & cost efficient than the hours spent on these pieces of art.

I was particularly fascinated by this approach to advertising, as nowadays companies tend to focus their advertising campaigns in a more digital way. For example, it is no secret that email marketing campaigns can be a particularly impactful way of reaching wide audiences. You can learn more about some of the benefits of email marketing by visiting the makeawebsitehub website and checking out some of their reviews. Ultimately, I think combining traditional advertising techniques with modern digital marketing techniques is the way forward when it comes to promoting products and services. Adverts today do more than simply show you a product. More often than not, they tell you a story that is so interesting and beautiful, sometimes you simply forget that they are trying to sell you a product. This excellent motion graphics showreel, for example, demonstrates how advertising and art can go hand in hand.

Anyway, back to the outdoor painting, I never really thought about these painters before. They fall under the same category as graffiti artists for me. They’re everywhere yet no one really sees them or really respects them the same as any artist you can find in a gallery or various printed media. And what really got to me, as a creative person who’s put hours into a project before, is that all this time and effort (for probably not amazing $) is just going to get painted over sooner than later. It’s not like a piece of art that will be preserved in any way. All these hours of work will exist for a moment in time, then on to the next.

I found it very interesting and even kinda sad in a way.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

I see a few of these outdoor ads on my drive to work everyday in downtown Toronto. Here’s a shot of an Apple iPad2 one that’s in progress. I have often admired watching the work in progress but never really thought about the artists doing the work. I will definitely think of them differently now.