A Study on The Problemes and Improvements of Outdoor Advertisement Design

By Jeon Hyoung-Do (Major in visual communication design Department of Applied Arts, Graduate School Keimyung University; Supervised by Prof. Kim,Ki-Han)

The existing value of outdoor ads as an advertising medium is to appeal to the visual sense of the public outdoors as it is generally seen in signboards, neon signs, posters, and ad-balloons. etc. Compared to other media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, outdoor ad has much more freedom of production and creation in express form and space, and give us various expressions in one poster from cubism to mobility.

What is more, outdoor ad has more popularity than any other media because it has many advantages like continuous exposure frequency and mass transmission effect. Now it is growing rapidly with 88 Olympics as a turning-point. Especially, it can not be emphasized too much that outdoor ads are an important factor-forming the city appearances.

Just people who wear their clothes becoming to their character look more beautiful when it has proper outdoor ads to their character, it could be naturally said, that outdoor ad as an advertising medium is another social problem, for advertisements are already found everywhere we go and has found their position as, a part of culture in proportion to the developement of the society. So we can't ignore their impacts on the nation or society, and every country, directly or indirectly is ruling the advertisements considered not good for their national emotion or culture.

It is often suggested that the censorship is essential to ads because the basic feature of advertisement is commercial or because advertisement is only a medium of unilateral messages. There also exists some opinions that we should leave producers in full charge of their work or that the censorship is needed only after the creation because the ads themselves are creatures based on the creativity.

But it is true that taking only one of them is actually very difficult. After all, variety of outdoor ads and their ways of expression are forming the city image in the view of appealing to the visual sense of public outdoors but only characteristic and beautiful ones would be accepted selectively. I expect this kind of outdoor ads will be the major stream in the diversification of outdoor ad forms. I assure the most important thing when we deal with outdoor ads is the role of them in the view of public good, or ad the elements of city appearances. We can't ignore the importance of outdoor advertising ad an industry or personal advertisement, but the recognition that it's role, above all, should abide by the public good in the society could be the start-point when we deal with the problem.

Because outdoor ads are setup outdoors in the city as a medium of activities, their status is determined by the economic and social system and the environmental structure of the city. In other words, when we view the city appearances as a concept of 'city scenery', the impact of outdoor ads as one of the city appearances is given the weight.

From this view point, standing in the terms of visual aspects of outdoor ads, I tried to make a model in deciding the trends of reforms of outdoor ads by analyzing structurally the causes of phenomenal problems. It is very importantly recognized in general that we should make our outdoor environment beautiful. But it was true that this aspect was ignored because the impacts of the qualities of outdoor ads, good or bad, are not transmitted directly to our actual life. In present situation efforts to improve local cities' images and identities are on-going due to local autonomy. I'm sure that outdoor ads around us will take a very important role in our city appearances and will function appropriately as a measure to evaluate our national economy and people's living standards only when multi-lateral efforts in many areas are implemented.