Outdoor contractors take a smart line on indecipherable ads.(Brief Article)(Column)

Amazing, isn't it, that the car sector spent 31 million [pounds sterling] on posters last year but, VW aside, most of it was rubbish? Perhaps it's because TV is usually seen as the lead medium from which posters must dutifully take their lead. Perhaps, too, the growth of pan-European TV executions leads to a dumbing down of the creative process because locally the client and agency spend too much energy warding off excursions into the UK market by some Johnny Foreigner colleague.

Sitting in a traffic-jam on the Hammersmith roundabout recently, fresh from the Campaign Poster Awards judging, I began pondering why many of the posters there were, if not rubbish, certainly forgettable. Vogue, Vauxhall, Honda, Jazz FM, some indecipherable financial services shockers ... none of them provoked that reaction of astonishment that good posters can do.

In fact, the last time I was truly blown away by a poster campaign was more than a year ago and, I cheerfully admit, it had a lot to do with the fact that I had just had a baby. The Weetabix poster by Lowe Lintas, showing a baby using building blocks to spell the word paediatrician, was the last poster to intrigue me in that split-second way that posters, if they are any good, always do.

So, putting aside the "x" factor that all outstanding creative work has in common but which we can never define, what would the components of a good poster be? A good poster is not overcrowded, carries legible copy and stands out from its surroundings. ...