Anatomy of Design

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ANATOMY OF DESIGN

In recent years the billboard—that bastion of bombastic commercial advertising and

nemesis of roadside beautification advocates who attack it as blight on the

landscape (urban and otherwise)—has become a valuable venue for art and design

(political and otherwise). From adbusting, where advertising billboards are defaced

or altered, to the guerilla, where signboards are rented for alternative messages,

this ubiquitous mass communication space serves many personal missions and

social causes. Stefan Sagmeister, who makes sport of co-opting conventional media

for unconventional goals, joined the ranks of billboardists when in 2005 he ...