SANDWICHES!

Well, sandwich boards. Street marketing at its finest, and personally I think a wholly underutilized and insanely cost effective method of driving foot traffic to a retail location. As a pedestrian, I’m not likely to turn my head and window shop on my way home, if for no other reason than I’m likely to crash into someone or something in a less-than-graceful, YouTube-worthy cloud of dust. But sandwich boards are like mini billboards, a quick few seconds to grab someone’s attention with a marketing message or offer. When I’m walking home hungry, offers of Yorkshire pudding change my dinner plans on a dime. When I’m thirsty, bar rails for only $2.50 will put a 30 minute delay on my arrival home. OK, maybe I’m easily influenced and appreciate the sandwich board’s siren call a little much, but they are effective for this open-minded pedestrian wanderer, and I think everyone should use them. If you need a few good sandwich board one liners, email me!

PS: Well done, Ninjas, well done.

Good copywriting can catch one’s attention whether it is printed on a big billboard or on a letter-sized paper stapled to a street pole. The latter is sometimes a major advertising avenue for small businesses, because of their budget. A good copy can make one’s homemade print advertising stand out among the sea of babysitting, tutoring, guitar-lesson, and lost-pet advertisements.

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When we see an art piece in a gallery, we can usually only glimpse at it for a finite fragment of time. But is art really what we see? Maybe art is the process before and/or even after our encounter with an art piece? There are many layers to art, which change constantly with every new interpretation. Amanda Schoppel of Toronto has documented processes of art pieces changing their shape, relationship, and construction.

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The London 2012 Olympic Games logo is on the news again in the midst of yet another controversy. This logo, previously found capable of inducing seizures, is now claimed to be racist.

It took four years for the Iranian National Olympic Committee to come up with the accusation that the London 2012 Olympic Games logo is racist! These allegations are based on the logo’s resemblance to the word “Zion”, a biblical term used to refer to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem specifically. One can assume that Iranian officials are more concerned by its association to the Zionist movement than by a reference to Jerusalem, but you never know. Obviously, the International Olympic Committee has denied these claims and defended the logo design as being just a representation of the figure 2012 in a “modern, bold, flexible” way.

From a recent political shtick at the Toronto City Hall to the 2011 colour of the year, pink symbolism has yet again permeated our media. But, this time, it is not limited to the promotion of breast-cancer awareness… According to the Pantone Color Institute, pink is going to be everywhere in 2011.

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