Written By:
- Date published:
11:06 am, September 2nd, 2008 - 28 comments
Categories: activism, humour -
Tags: billboard, wave goodbye
Over to you (click the image below for the high res version – 300K JPG):
send us your versions and we’ll post them under the fold.
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Start a competition. I’m sure the people here could “improve” on National’s spinners contributions.
[lprent: Read the damn post (oops)]
Might be an idea to remove the authorisation statement from the blanks?
yeah, done
I think National are right on the money with this billboard and the other ones they have in the pipeline. For a preview, check them all out at http://rodneygrub.blogspot.com/
[lprent: Normally I’d zap you for unapologetic link-whoring. But those are actually quite good images.]
Someone beat me too it!
Unapologetic link-whoring! They’re great 😉 !
Interestingly, the Nats have chosen a similar style with wordy policy messsages as the notorious 2005 Green Party billboards (yes, I do admit the Greens get some things wrong, and that was one of them).
Suspect these will be as hard to read as those were, which is good.
toad: Urrgh did you have to remind me. The Nats have a bit more money so they paid for more background.
Mind you the NZLP has done some bloody awful ones as well Usually they tend to the boring rather than awful. But the 1993 ones in particular…. We had problems giving the corflute away to activists (for protest placards) after that election.
toad, the 2002 ones were almost as bad in that regard, having too complicated an idea to digest in a couple of seconds (although better design). They were quite useful in the garden, for making things like compost bins!
Heh, now we have babies giving the fingers – should be good for a laugh for everyone.
People may not have noticed, but David Slacks ‘remote’ offering is in Haiku, and that makes it all the more awesome.
I like the latest two. cheers principessa and anon
Wow… you guys obviously have some excellent resources: it would have taken quite a lot of time and skill to recreate that background picture-perfect to remove the original copy. Since the big wigs here are on the inside, I’m curious to know if the expense came out of the parliamentary budget? 🙂
Oh, and I’d love to see National actually print the Kiwirail, Kiwibank, ACC, Minimum Wage and Climate Change billboards!! Great stuff guys!! 🙂
G:
Don’t be silly. It is a repeating pattern with defined edges. You copy from a ‘clear’ background area and paste over the text. You line up using the pattern edges. If needs be on this one, you inflate or deflate the background. Alternatively, you just use the B52 pattern and recreate the graduated background and the text on top of it.
I’m not a graphic artist, but I could do it in less then 20 minutes after I got the original image using Paintshop pro (I like it because it is better at pixel level than photoshop). Hell Whale could probably do it in less time than I can (more practice).
Nice try G, but you want to talk to your wee mate Farrar. Seems he uploaded an unprotected version of the billboard to his website, which meant all we had to do was run the PDF through Illustrator and all the paths were still there.
Oh wow – that is even easier. Mind you, you have to ask, where did DPF get the original from? After all he is an independent commentator…
Nice try G, but you want to talk to your wee mate Farrar. Seems he uploaded an unprotected version of the billboard to his website
So Farrar had the raw file? The raw file it’s likely only the Nat’s design team and a few insiders had? I suggest G goes over to DPF’s immediately and start asking questions about that!
It would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall in the Nats PR office. Do you go with the intended format or do you ditch it now?
The concept is a dog, dreamt up by a young advertising whizz with no understanding of some of the allusions he/she set off. It will not fly. Like a lumbering B52 with a big payload, it is going to be laughed off the motorways: WWII, tampons and saturation bombing are not images that you associate with “ambition for NZ”.
Key is the problem: ditch him!
Just been to Whale and I see no raw file… got a link? Though I do see, coincidentally, we’re on the same wavelength: they are indeed excellent policy positions! Again, well done I say! 🙂
This looks like fun.. what’s the best font to use to keep it real? 😉
Last time I checked Kiwiblog DPF’s PDF link wasn’t working anymore. My guess is he took it down.
I don’t bother visiting Whale. Someone just sent me a post of his from today accusing us of colluding with Helen Clark and the SIS over the Lord Ashcroft affair. Honestly, you’ve got to wonder how long he can keep coming out with stuff like that before his minions realise they’re being taken for a ride by a paranoid, emotionally insecure man-child.
Steve, apparently the fonts are Unit-LightLF, Unit-RegularLF and Unit-MediumLF but they’re proprietary so you probably don’t have them. I just went with Myriad Pro, Adobe’s default font, and it seems to do a good enough job.
Are you saying Kiwiblog had a PDF of the Nat’s billboard without the type? Find that very hard to believe. There’s no way that would have been released.
G. It was an unprotected PDF – all the layers will still there, meaning each layer could be removed or edited in Illustrator. Ask anyone who uses Adobe Creative Suite, they’ll explain it to you.
Some of those are excellent. Well done. I particularly like the “oh Shit” one and the one where the planes are crashing.
Linked to some from public address. I seriously like the Transport policy one and the carpet bombing one. Thanks David Slack.