Someone has sent me a couple of public security posters - one from from Baltimore, another from London. Odd that both have got such a distinctive mid 20th century style to them, immediately suggestive of totalitarianism and Orwell's (as opposed to Channel 4's) Big Brother.
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I remember seeing the London Transport ones a couple of years ago (bloody good idea, CCTV on buses). I wonder if the same design consultancy / ad agency was behind the campaign?
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Given that these posters are in both Baltimore and London, I can't believe it's the same ad agency. I think some sophisticated post-structural semiotic analysis is called for.
Yeah, different ad agency - here's the link to the Robin Shepherd Group who produced the "Watch, Ride and Report" and no sign of Transport for London in their client list.
I can only think that the purpose of using retro-style posters is to place some kind of ironic distance from the message itself, albeit without going as far as satirizing or fatally undermining it. It provides a sort of jokey way of making a serious point, in contrast to a more literal warning which would be in danger of seeming hysterical or tyrannical.
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