Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Living in the past

Speaking of which. Yesterday I found this disturbing image at The Institute of Jurassic Technology:





Is this real? Is this recent? Is this some kind of a Boris (he of the bouffant hair) scheme? And is the saucery object above "beneath the" meant to represent a U.F.O.?

Of course, the poster deliberately recalls 1930s advertisements like this one:





Via.

Which in turn are echoed by other posters from the period, even though they have nothing to do with public transport in the narrow sense:



Via.

UPDATE: For more spooky Big Brother stuff, check out this post by Francis Sedgemore.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The poster is entirely real, and Ken-era rather than Boris-era: circa 2002, if I remember right, and one of a series of designs on a 1950s science fiction theme celebrating advances in the bus service ("HERE IN GREATER NUMBERS" is the other slogan I can remember). No trace of it at the London Transport Museum online poster display, but they had full-size originals in the shop last time I went. Almost bought one.

Anonymous said...

Ye gods, that's a really unsettling advert. It sends a completely different Orwellian message to me, rather than the one of a cozy security blanket that is presumably intended...

https://obscenedesserts.blogspot.com/ said...

Peter,

Thanks for the info. I must check out the Transport Museum next time I'm in London. Full size, too? I don't have enough nightmares by half and this poster in the bedroom might just do the trick.

So Ken thought this was a good idea? No awareness of a certain ... ambiguity?

Geoff,

Can you imagine anyone finding this poster reassuring? I don't know what got into that ad-person's head!