From Voice ~ Topics: advertising, advice
The Bubble Project
Four years ago, I was working as an art director at a global advertising agency in New York. The agency offered a good salary, friendly colleagues, easy hours, great benefits and a glamorous business card. I even had my own window office with a view, yet I was deeply frustrated. Even though I came up with innovative advertising ideas, which the client and agency both felt would engage consumers, the ideas always ended up being killed because of the conservative mentality that pervaded the corporate culture.
Clients and agencies tend to shy away from trying new approaches. New means risk. The initial excitement clients had over my ideas quickly gave way to fear of the new. Even if a good idea managed to escape the agency walls, it would likely go through a barrage of testing to make sure the ad didn’t offend anyone. The irony is, work coming out of this process usually isn’t liked by anyone.
After four years of trying to make good ideas see the light of the day, I realized I shouldn’t depend on others to make a great idea happen. The only way was to do everything on my own: creation, funding, production and distribution. I wanted to create a simple device that would instantly transform the way people see ads, giving them the power to respond. The speech-bubble sticker was the solution.
I financed the printing 20,000 bubble stickers and started carrying them with me all the time. Whenever I saw a street ad with a face—BANG!— I placed a blank bubble sticker next to it waiting to be filled by any anonymous passersby. I placed empty bubble stickers on ads everywhere: bus stops, telephone booths, subways, construction sites and building walls. Surprisingly, bubbles were filled in very quickly. To my delight, a lot of responses were smart and hilarious, so I started taking pictures of the results. Soon, I had thousands of filled-in-bubble photos.
In 2005, the Bubble Project was launched. Here, people can find the collected bubbles organized by themes: social commentary, sex and drugs, politics and religion, media and fashion, art and philosophy, humor, and personal messages. There are also downloadable bubble templates so people can make their own bubbles, for free. The site was featured on Boing Boing (the world’s biggest blog). In that one day, the Bubble site received over 50,000 visitors. This crashed my server, but opened a whole new world of possibilities. Other bloggers started to write about the project. Magazines, newspapers and several TV programs started to feature the Bubble story. Recently, Newsweek and ABC World News both featured stories on the Bubbles. People around the world are connecting with this project and are setting up their own Bubble sites: Italy (progettobolla.com), Argentina (proyectoburbuja.com) and Romania (coming soon), are some of the newest ones.
Like money, advertising itself is not good or bad. I do believe though that there are good and bad ways to use its power. I actually enjoy advertising when it entertains or makes me think. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with 99.9 percent of the ads I see. I also take issue with the proliferation of outdoor advertising, encroaching upon our public spaces. When we watch TV, we enter into an unwritten contract, agreeing to watch shows for free, in exchange for consuming a corporate message. Going outside now seems to have the same strings attached. The bubbles instantly cut this string, transforming million-dollar corporate monologues into free public dialogues. As my mentor and friend Stefan Sagmeister pointed out, “everybody wins with the Bubble Project.” The advertiser benefits because more people to look at their ads when they’re bubbled, and the public finally gets a chance to talk back and express themselves. We can all enjoy seeing the transformed ads once given the human touch of the public’s point of view.
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While the excessive proliferation of outdoor advertising is definitely annoying, I would argue that that does not grant us a license to deface it. The best approach of countering it, I would argue, is a combination of encouraging clients to exercise restraint in using outdoor media, and advocating legislation to impose reasonable limits on it.
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When advertising ventures out into public domain; it is now owned by the public (visually and mentally). We speak to the masses with these ads and it is great when the audience takes the messages we send, deconstructs them, and beems them back to us. Don't we all wish for a direct dialogue with our audience, instead of just us transmitting to them?
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Interesting that on the one hand as Ji mentions, "everybody wins with the Bubble Project," insofar as the advertisements get more attention, but the bubblers are also subject to fine or arrest because it is against the law to deface property. Quite a paradox. The advertiser gains in every which way. While the protester, if that's what this is about, is at risk. BTW, how long will it be before hip agencies start using the bubble motif in their ads. In fact, hasn't it already been done in a way with the stick on ads for microsoft that were stuck onto sidewalks and buildings?
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Dialogues are great. However, as long as the ad in question is on advertiser-controlled property (as opposed to something posted on a bulletin board or similiar), my argument is that if the advertiser decides it should be a monologue, we are obligated to respect that. Increasingly, in marketing, dialogues are replacing monologues (a trend documented by Professor Philip Kotler, regarded as the foremost authority on marketing), so two-way communication is happening, one way or another. I would also love to see dialogue between the public and government bureaucracies, which are often out of touch with their stakeholders.
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Personally, I love the work Ji has done and felt delight viewing the result. In response to the other comments, I think that the general public should have as much "right" to, for example, the space in the sky (in the case of an outdoor billboard). Surely advertisers can handle a portion of this sort of thing? Or have we become such a protective, closed, repressed society that even a little bit of wit, a little bit of subversion and a little bit of creativity are to be "outlawed". And as a member of the general public outside the industry, I have to say I don't feel that there is yet any sort of significant and meaningful dialogue between advertisers and their recipients.
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This is a dumb article. This is a well healed Art Director who had it all, but becomes "deeply frustrated". The author rants about the public as "helpless victims" to the "aggressive invasion" of advertising that "only screams at us". And Ji doesn't forget those nasty "The corporations behind these ads [who] simply aren’t interested in listening to what we have to say because listening requires giving up control". So our writer goes about dreaming up a scheme to deface property. Real creative person? This is my first visit to AIGA, I thought it represented designers, and creatives, not oppressed socialists who ran out of ideas.
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I think Bruce English does raise a valid point in that this article does, to some extent, make it look like AIGA members are in the business of, essentially, vandalizing other people's property. This is, of course, not the case at all, indeed, such conduct strikes me as being contrary to the spirit of the code of professional practice to which many of the professional members agree (and in return, are authorized to sign their names with an AIGA).
Essentially, my argument is that the average graphics designer, and indeed the average man on the street, have better things to do with their respective time than go around placing plastic stickers on what amounts to other people's property. I don't consider such actions to be design, I consider them to be, quite frankly, vandalism, and I can't help but feel this kind of thing does nothing for the image of our profession. -
The purpose of AIGA VOICE is to VOICE various ideas and get feedback. The Bubble Project is one such idea, and clearly there are some interesting reactions to it.
Among them, the question about whether designers are honor-bound not deface other people's public messages. While respect of intellectual property should be a given, designers have long been framers, if not conceivers, of social and political protest. Granted the Bubble Project is not a discrete work, insofar as it is necessary to deface or intervene in another's space. But it is a critical response to design - and in this case advertising - that is immediate and pro-active. I can't argue for or against its effectiveness, but the essay was published to help continue a discussion concerning the social and civic responsibility of designers in a media saturated world. -
"designers have long been framers, if not conceivers, of social and political protest"
Designers may be political agitators, but there is much more to design than being an activist. Good taste? stunts are circus and Reality TV material. If one is challenged to a point of not sensing good taste, vs. crass action, then design is likely not your ability. -
I might also add that if we as designers are going to engage in social and political protest, wouldn't it be better to protest something that perhaps a tad more salient than those dreaded evil, baby-eating corporations that seem to be no. 1 on our hitlist (and our no. 1 source of revenue)? When you think about broader human crises such as the current conflict in the middle east, and other impending nightmares, the sort of "protest" that sticking callout bubbles on other people's ads just really strikes me as being a huge waste of time.
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an interesting controversy. I do commend Ji Lee's revolutionary work. His idea of involving the audience to advertisements is a clever solution to accomplishing the impossible. The manner in which it is experimented, however, I do not agree with. I recall from my professor that cartoon bubbles are not very designy. I created other versions that were more shape-like, elegant..I can't explain but... I think this project will improve significantly if the designer researched more, reconstructed his strategy and presented more professionally. The online site was a good build-up.
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I think the bubbles not being very "designy" is part of the point.
This reminds me of an addidas campaign that encouraged audience participation in its public, outdoor advertising. Street Artists decorated blank billboards, and the results were integrated (co-opted?) back into the ads. Here is a little writeup on it:
http://experiencethemessage.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/adidas_gets_the.html -
This project does not place a hard structured interface for advertising feedback, however, it does explore new possiblities for interactive design advertising.
It must be raised that its inherently guerilla nature does have the issue of skewing the original intent of the designer. Depending on what the bubble contains it may constructively or destructively affect this intent.
Despite this, the method that Ji Lee has used is valuable in that it stimulates volantary and truly anonymous response from the public on the content of the advertisement and the entity/organisation it represents that may otherwise never be observed. -
This basis of interactivity and communication and community is a welcome sight with the bubbles project. Open source ideas and free thinking really are great and bubbles exhibit that, while adding to a predominantly 1 sided un-interactive advertising mechanism, which has the word "....corporate" in it.
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One of the most interesting things about the thought bubbles is that they are very rarely about the products or services being advertised. When they are critiques of the product, service, company or advertisement they point out, precisely, the flaws in the package (unrealistic body images, unethical business practices, etc).
Most of the bubbles seem to be saying that public advertising is not engaged in the types of discussions that people think are worthy of public arenas. "Why am I being bombarded with insignificant messages about product X when what I really care about social issue Y?"
Perhaps companies would do well to sponsor public service announcements in public spaces. Or, to give people some genuine content instead of just an image. It doesn’t have to be much. Just some little piece of poignent information that enriches their lives. -
Some examples:
We are at war.
XYZ News Agency
Don't drive sleepy.
ABC Coffee Company
(or the common and successful)
Last gas for 80 miles.
MNOP Gas Station. -
i think that lee's trying to make non-designers leave their comments on these ads. thus it's not him encouraging people to deface the ads, but the passersby, the placement of the bubble is just an enabler to leave comments. in certain cases people will respond, in some they won't. I'm left a little uncertain as to whether this is meant to be a tool to make a comment or to gather comments.
anyway, it's fun to see sometimes, but really nothing that hasn't been done before. but it sure is a good tool to get your name out there... well well. -
Even beyond the implications of interactivity within public advertising and graphic design. Lee's project is hitting bigger issues. I believe it is making commentary on war, racism, and other big social issues; and doing so by letting "the little guy" speak out about it. If he is wasting his time putting those stickers up, then why are so many of us wasting time discussing it?
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I think Ted is right. This project is successful b/c if it has gotten us to talk about it, it's gotten others to talk about it. And i think that is what is so successful about this project--it encourages Discussion, if nothing else. It gets people talking, thinking, etc. about things in our lives and our community.
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It still, however, constitutes a violation of other people's private property, not to mention a vicious attack on the work of the designers whose advertisements happen to be subjected to it.
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We all tire of the mindless visual bombardment, eventually we no longer really SEE them at all but see through them.
Ji gives us a double take on an ad that chances are would have never demanded our attention to begin with.
This has been done in many other in other mediums with no outrage or irritation. ie Steve Martin, Mystery Science Theather 2000. -
The difference of course being that legal satire in that manner doesn't involve the actual defacement of private property. If this project entailed simply posting copies of the ads, with bubbles attached, on media paid for by Mr. Lee, then I would have no objection. The placement of these stickers on someone else's private property, however, is my problem with this project, since legally it constitutes vandalism and places us on no higher moral ground than say, illegal graffiti taggers (some graffiti artists have correctly identified the need to ask permission before doing a project, and as a result a legimitate field of graffiti art has emerged-and that's what I think needs to happen here).
So, to put it bluntly, what we're talking about here is criminal activity. If you vandalize other people's property, you should go to jail-and be forced to pay civil and criminal penalties. Advocating this type of illegal and immoral behavior does nothing to aid credibility of the AIGA, or graphics design as a profession. -
Is public space owned by the public?
Aren't poster ads already defacing public property (see fig. 2)? Why is it that when a company puts up a poster on a public wall it's considered advertisement and when someone writes or posts on it it's vandalism?
And for PUBLIC SPACES where advertisers do pay, I don't want to see a McD's ad everytime I take the bus (how did ads come to own public transportation). So seeing a bubble next to Ronalds face saying "Hey kids want to be fat?" is very satisfying.
Strong and important cultural expression can often be illegal. This doesn't mean it should be undermined as simple vandalism, and not be considered as discussion worthy by some. -
Oh, I don't know.
One could be an impulsive paranoid making a buck off a "learn to vandalize" (Graffiti for Idiots). Or instead, one could do the following:
- in any US, or Canadian community; talk to a parole officer to find out how to help troubled kids learn new skills, and teach them how to constructively deal with challenges,
- sponsor a camp, hospital, education programme(s)-- just like what big business frequently does
- go to Afaganistan to inspire farmers to grow something other than narcotic related crops
- create a scholarship from the bucks earned off this printed "work" to help a disadvantaged youngster who shows creative merit (further education, build a business, or become employable)
- make something beautiful
Yea, isn't it easier (oops . . . inspiring) to be angry at this big awful capitalist world we live in. So, in one of the most free nations in the world, folks scrawl ¢rap on walls to "get even" with what ever bugs them. Guess it can't be all bad, because there are a lot of folks writing arty deep thoughts about this lick'n'stick venture.
Only thing is-- this is the sort of fluff you'd find in Mad magazine-- oh, about thirty five years ago. And it was funny. Because they suggested what could be created when twisted copy was married to a product, photo, etc. But, they didn't deface the real world material on the street. That was the meat of the joke-- it was a "what if" scenario.
So this old clown act is printed on commercial presses, using valuable tress for paper, while the "I know better than you do" author pockets the cash, and we are supposed see a difference between this and the corporations, which the author loathes?
If fellow designers find this self indulgent project to be offensive, I suppose we can scrawl/ paint all over the author's property, because, hey, we are oppressed by the author's mischievous adventure.
Last item. What at surprise to see A.I.G.A. feature this shameful theme of anti-design. Wouldn't you think A.I.G.A. would have more respect for its vacation. The bubble project properly belong on the A.N.S.W.E.R. web log site. -
Sorry for the careless spelling: "vacation" is supposed to be "vocation"
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I am absolutely titillated by this project. Congratulations! But, I wonder: What are the legal/moral ramifications of defacing private property?
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Unlike many of the posts, I strongly believe this project was a positive step toward creating dialogue among the public. Not everyone is going to love every advertisement that is hung in public spaces that make them unavoidable. Advertisements are intrusions into people's lives, so obviously there is going to be a reaction. Ji Lee opened up the floor for the public to express that reaction, which often resulted in poking fun at the ad. By using anonymity no one had to fear being scrutinized for their opinions. There are no boundaries with the bubble project, unlike the world of advertising, making it a genuine and unique form of expression.
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“I might also add that if we as designers are going to engage in social and political protest, wouldn't it be better to protest something that perhaps a tad more salient than those dreaded evil, baby-eating corporations that seem to be no. 1 on our hitlist (and our no. 1 source of revenue)? When you think about broader human crises such as the current conflict in the middle east, and other impending nightmares, the sort of "protest" that sticking callout bubbles on other people's ads just really strikes me as being a huge waste of time” 8/5/06
In response to a comment in an earlier post.
Is it so hard to imagine that designers and creatives could do both? Add our two cents to the world of public advertising AND protest larger global issues. Really how much time does it take to write a few sentences on a bubble? I don’t think this is a waste of time. If the ad agencies looked at this from an innovative point of view they’d see these “bubbles” are as valuable as a focus group; a chance to see if they’ve posted their ads in a receptive area and if the ads are sending the message they intended. I agree with Ji Lee’s ideas of empowering the masses. It’s refreshing to see that not everyone buys into the hype we’re sold by these “baby-eating corporations”. -
hello, im doing my dissertation on culture jamming and the reclaiming of public space at university in lancaster, england. i was wondering if anyone knew of any academic articles online that may help me?
thank you very much
dan mohan
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