Global Graphica

Elastic City stencil on Crosby Street in SoHo, in downtown New York City.

Celebrated fashion and celebrity photographer Terry Richardson appears in a billboard ad for eyewear designer Sol Moscot modeling “The Terry” sunglasses and standing with his signature thumbs-up pose. The ad Is prominently displayed on a backlit billboard outside the Sol Moscot store at the corner of Delancey and Orchard streets in the Lower East Side of New York City. The ad was recently defaced with stickers and graffiti.

Local New York City classical music radio station WQXR has taken a cue from and cleverly appropriated street-art superstar artist Shepard Fairey’s Obey / Giant Has a Posse imagery for an ad campaign promoting Beethoven Awareness Month.

Billboard in Nolita, near SoHo in downtown New York City, for the Palladium brand with Pharrell and a “Tokyo Rising” theme. Blowin’ up, it is.

Painted outdoor advertisement for the Oishi beverage company’s “Chakuza” brand canned green-tea drink in the Bang Rak neighborhood of Bangkok, Thailand.

Oddly (and perhaps tellingly about Thai consumer psychology), Oishi is a Thai soft-drink company with an affected Japanese name and brand imagery. “Oishi” means delicious in Japanese.

Chakuza itself is an even more curious name. It’s like a portmanteau of the Japanese words “cha,” which means tea, and “yakuza,” the term used to refer to organized crime gangs.

Chakuza is also, coincidentally, the name of an Austrian hip hop artist, which is interesting because our friend Julia, who sent us this picture from Bangkok, is Austrian.

Thanks for the pic, Julia!

Julia Schuster Photo. Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.

Some clever marketers have come up with an idea for putting QR codes on the tops of buildings such that the code can be seen on Google Maps and Google Earth satellite photos.

The concept is to essentially leverage rooftops as ad space that then becomes part of the photographic record (for free) on Google’s popular mapping service.

Creating the giant QR codes and putting them on the buildings, however, is not free, with one company charging about $8,500 to do so.

The large “Understated is Overrated” billboard ad for luxury handbag and shoe brand Kate Spade painted on a brick wall on Crosby Street in SoHo, downtown New York City.

This funny, clever billboard for the German energy company Vattenfall in Berlin incorporates a ladder and a life-size mannequin of uniformed worker climbing it.

Following on the successes of other Spanish clothing retailers such as Zara and Mango, Desigual entered the U.S. market a couple of years ago and has increased the visibility of its colorful brand in bigger and bolder ways. Here an entire building in New York City’s Herald Square shopping district has been taken over by a massive Desigual billboard-style ad.

In Part IV of our series of posts chronicling the painting of an outdoor graffiti-art ad for a brand of ginger ale,  we see the finishing touches on details on the second face of the artwork, which faces Canal Street. Well done.

Our third post on the Ginger Ale graffiti ad painting in progress at the corner of Canal and Ludlow streets in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There the artists build out the rest of the ad that wraps around the corner and put some final touches on the details.

Check out this massive outdoor billboard-style ad for Dos Equis (XX) beer painted on the side of an apartment building at the corner of Delancey and Allen streets  in the fashionable Lower East Side of Manhattan. The ad features the popular and funny  “Most Interesting Man in the World” character who is the star of recent advertising campaigns for the Mexican beer brand.

Part II of the series of photos documenting the gradual progress of graffiti artists painting a massive outdoor advertisement for a ginger ale brand.

In Part III, the next post, we’ll see the painting wrap around the corner of the building at Canal and Ludlow strets in the Lower East Side of downtown New York City.

Part 1 of 2 posts chronicling the work in progress of some graffiti street art being painted. In this case, the art is in the service of commerce. The graff is is an advertisement for a new brand of ginger ale. Stay tuned to see the finished work.

We like the the look of this hip-hop imagery featuring Theophilus London and Michael Williams in this Bushmills billboard ad in SoHo, in New York City.

We don’t really pay attention to the Super Bowl game itself and this year was no exception. But, of course, in what has become as big an event and tradition as the epic football match, we’ve watched, rated and discussed the many TV commercials that aired during the live broadcast of the game. Here are the 10 best according to Spike.

Personally, we can’t stop thinking about the Volkswagen Mini Vader commercial titled “The Force” (watch video below), which featured a child dressed up as iconic Star Wars villain Darth Vader. Even though it wasn’t the best commercial in our humble opinion, it was effective insofar as we’ve remembered it and are talking about it.

( Red ) “2015″ campaign advertisement mural on the side of tenement building on Mulberry Street in Nolita / SoHo, downtown New York City.

Our Global Graphica friend and all-round creative force of goodness,  Richard, sent us this pic from the road and it put a massive smile on our face: The “Meat Without Feet” truck somewhere in the wilds of greater New York City suburbia (quite possibly Conneticut). Clever touch of marketing. LOVE IT.

Image Copyright 2011 Richard Haase. All rights reserved.

Billboard for the World Basketball Festival at the corner of Lafayette and Houston streets in SoHo , in New York City.