Ideas for Billboards

Billboards are designed to capture public attention.

Billboards promote businesses and causes by capturing the attention of pedestrians and motorists with their message. As billboards become ever more common, designers are driven to create increasingly unusual themes to catch public attention. Unusual and even bizarre designs, including additions that break the plane of the billboard, optical illusions and objects attached to the billboard are becoming more and more common.

Suicidal Billboard

This billboard idea is ideal for something like a huge sale at a furniture or retail store that is ending at a certain defined time. The billboard contains an enormous digital clock that is counting backward, with the clock reaching the zero point at the moment that the sale ends. Compelling slogans such as "The End is Near" occupy the rest of the billboard. When it reaches the zero point, the clock and the billboard explode and are consumed in a ball of fire. This idea would require the presence of security to keep people away at the point when the billboard self destructs.

Billboard

This idea utilizes reverse psychology to counter and take advantage of the trend towards ever more creative and outrageous billboards. The billboard is large, flat and completely white, with "BILLBOARD" in large black letters in the center. The billboard itself carries no other information, but its image is utilized by the advertiser in other venues, such as magazine and television advertising, to associate it with a product in the public mind.

Sound Billboard

A billboard is fitted with a radio transmitter broadcasting a portion of an advertising campaign. A written message at the top of the billboard instructs passing motorists to turn their radios on at a certain frequency, which broadcasts information that interacts with the billboard message. For example, the billboard depicts an orchestra, and the radio provides the music. Or, the image shows people talking about the benefits of a product, and the radio allows drivers to listen to their conversation.

Renewable Energy Billboard

A billboard that promotes the benefits of renewable energy is outfitted with a solar panel or a windmill on the scaffolding or on the billboard itself. The billboard is lit up during dark hours, illuminating a slogan that informs the public that the lights are powered by the windmill or solar panel. This idea serves not only as a promotion, but as a practical demonstration of the product and message being promoted: that alternative forms of energy are workable methods of accomplishing a task such as lighting a billboard.

References

• Kristof Creative: Outdoor Advertising: Billboard Design Services