Related and Random

Spirit (Ouija) Board lettering from Ira Coyne

This is one of a collection of brightly coloured Ouija boards from Ira Coyne on Faythe Levine’s blog.  It appears that even spirits can swear when they want to…

20 Jun 2012

Miniature Planet: Ghostsigns for Model Makers

I love this, miniature ghostsigns for use on model railways and other small scale hobbies.  This will be a welcome time saver for those who don’t have the dedication of Emmanuel Nouaillier.  That said, the extent to which they’re modelled on actual signs is difficult to gauge… There is currently a collection of 25 available […]

7 Feb 2012

Adzookie

The History of Advertising Trust Twitter stream recently brought this initiative to my attention from mobile advertising firm Adzookie. Essentially they will pay your mortgage if you agree to have this garish design slapped onto the external walls of your home. However, in the current downturn, and with people struggling to avoid repossessions, they may […]

4 Jun 2011

London Mural Preservation Society

At last week’s Sign Design Society talk I met Ruth who has started an initiative aimed at raising awareness, researching, restoring and protecting the many hand painted murals that can be found dotted across the capital.  These were generally initiated as community arts projects and Ruth has been tracking down the artists who once produced […]

10 Sep 2010

Street Art

sarflondondunc, ever alert to the gradual shifts in our Ghostsigns landscape, alerted me to this new piece of street art positioned on the great Boyd Pianos sign on Shacklewell Lane, Hackney. It’s by the Canadian artist Specter and is part of the ‘If I saw you in heaven’ project. This attempts to “address the issue of […]

11 Aug 2010

Anchor

Photo: Creative Review Photo: Creative Review Creative Review and a few others have spotted this new outdoor campaign for Anchor Butter.  When I first saw the photos I assumed they were genuine hand painted ads but they are actually printed billboards which, in the case of the press shots, are cleverly cropped to suggest otherwise. […]

5 Aug 2010

New Hovis Commercial

Rank Hovis kindly sponsored the work with The History of Advertising Trust in getting the archive off the ground and now their sister brand, Hovis, have featured a Ghostsign in their latest TV commercial. You can catch a glimpse at about 00:10 in the clip below. Incidentally this sign isn’t in the archive so any […]

7 Jun 2010

Ghostsigns Indoors

English’s Fancy Bazaar by Paul & Karen Rennie What with launching the archive, getting married and travel plans impacted by the volcano I’m a little behind with blog posting. This means I’ve been sitting on this little discovery for a couple of months. What you see above is the first and only example I’ve ever […]

1 May 2010

Roofads

Church Street, Ashbourne, Derbyshire Photo: rebalrid As I get increasingly close to the material gathered for the archive I start to notice little subtexts, themes and oddities within the collection. The latest of these is a series of what I have tentatively called ‘roofads’. These are signs painted directly onto the roofing tiles of buildings, […]

18 Feb 2010

Martin Wilson

Fascinating work from Martin Wilson discovered in Ultrabold (see previous pieces on ghostsigns here and here).  Ultrabold is the quarterly journal of the St Bride Library which is just off Fleet Street. I discovered the library a couple of years ago and it really is one of London’s hidden treasures, especially for those interested in […]

4 Feb 2010

Flook

[Update: This application no longer exists.] This free iPhone app now features ghostsigns in the form of geolocated photo cards.  My Flickr images have been used to test the app’s integration with the photosharing website and the results have been a success. By getting the app on your iPhone you can view and create photo […]

21 Jan 2010

Ancient Ghostsigns

Are these the oldest ghost signs in the world? Will at Naked came back from a trip to Italy where he visited the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum which were covered in volcanic ash for around 1,700 years following the eruption of mount Vesuvius in 79AD. While he was there he took these three fascinating […]

21 Jan 2010

Rage Factor

This campaign now has hand painted signs to support it!  The objective is to ‘steal’ the Christmas number one spot from this year’s X-Factor winner and here are the painters at work spreading the message. If you want to help with the effort then for just 29p you can do your bit to crack Cowell […]

15 Dec 2009

Window Painting

Shop window name painter Originally uploaded by Apotheker Nice picture here from a set of Apotheker in Amsterdam showing a window painter at work. Notice how he has masked off the letter heights. The full text is going to be ‘Bevlogen’ so I don’t know what the two little bits of masking at the end […]

25 Oct 2008

Bomb Shelter

Shelter, Lord North Street (photo by Pryere) John AKA Pryere sent me this great photo of an old sign on Lord North Street in London. It is a relic from the war and points directly at the front door of number 16 (see below), although refers to vaults under the pavement. Given the proximity of […]

24 Jun 2008

Derelict London Part 2

Since my post last year on Pall Talling’s Derelict London site he has had his work published in a book.  It makes for fascinating reading and is truly inclusive of the whole city. The book is divided into sections along the lines of those featured on his site such as ‘Houses & Flats’, ‘Pubs & […]

31 May 2008

Herbrand Street ‘Mural’

Biking home along the now congested cycle lanes in Bloomsbury I couldn’t help noticing this huge mural on the side of the terrace at the corner of Herbrand Street and Tavistock Place. I went back to it the next day with my camera and took these pictures. At the same time I went up to […]

25 May 2008

Diesel Wall

The fashion brand Diesel have picked up on the outdoor, big wall format with a creatively focussed competition, Diesel Wall, to fill the spaces they’ve booked on prominent locations in Manchester, New York, Zurich and Barcelona. The underlying premise is a revolt against the ‘pollution’ of public space with commercial messages by providing a canvass […]

28 Apr 2008

John Henstock

I got in touch with John Henstock recently as he’d started uploading some of his pictures on Flickr. Here’s one example from Brixton for Our Sons Menswear (funny, I’d always read it as Dursons Menswear!). They interested me because of their very distinctive look and so I asked how he had achieved the effect. He […]

27 Mar 2008

Its All Art

‘Goods in the City’ by Keith J. Hampton Keith Hampton over at It’s All Art kindly sent me this example of some work he has produced inspired by the ghost signs found in Indianapolis, USA. When I first saw this one (there’s another called ‘Miami Alley’) I assumed it was a collage, either digital or […]

9 Mar 2008

Save this sign…

  Ross sent me this photo which is of an old metallic sign that is currently free to take for anyone who has the necessary tools. His message follows: “It’s within plastic barriers for an excavation in the pavement but I pulled it out of a pile of rubble so I think it’ll get thrown […]

24 Jan 2008

Auckland Billboards

Dean wrote to me following the ban in Sao Paulo to let me know that it is now the politicians in Auckland, New Zealand, that are looking to outlaw billboards. However, they didn’t expect the advertising industry to fight back with a bit of characteristic creativity and develop a campaign to highlight what lies beneath […]

12 Oct 2007

Rise and Fall of Billboards

In response to my post on SmartWrap, Faris warned me to ‘beware the backlash’ and sent me a link to his blog which shows the following TV ad. It’s for Sky Movies, promoting the fact that their films are uninterupted by advertising and is inspired by the Brazilian billboard ban. An interesting construct which Faris […]

6 Oct 2007