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News and views on visual communications from the writers of Creative Review

Unidentified Flyposted Objects

Gavin 18/10/07, 11:52

All Designers Are W**kers poster

Should you happen upon this flyposted message, you’ll be struck by its beguiling duality: How offensive – yet how beautiful! Especially with that gold-foilblocked censor strip. Let’s face it, it’s not everyday you see a flyposted poster (flyposter?? Or is the flyposter the one doing the posting of the posters???) with gold foilblocking, more’s the pity. But wait, we’ve also been getting reports of sightings of more suspiciously well-produced posters popping up around London – ones with varnishes, scratch-off type and even heat-sensitive ink…

Flyposted posters

Here at Creative Review a pack of lovely postards arrived by post anonymously yesterday that are clearly linked to the posters and which suggest that the project’s title is Not For Commercial Use:

Not For Commercial Use poscard pack - open

Series postcardAll Designers Are W**kers postcard

Dendrochronology postcardTestcard-2

Delete applicable postcard gifSymbiosis postcard gif

Components postcardBack of pack

As we looked at the postcards, something seemed familiar… We’ve seen this before somewhere… Regular readers of Creative Review may recall that in our August issue we featured this project in production at a printers:

Not For Commercial Use production image 2

Not For Commercial Use production image

Could the mysterious forces behind this attempt at spreading little nuggets of printed loveliness around town be somehow related?

If you’d like to bag a poster, watch this film for clues as to their locations!


To see more images of the posters, visit www.notforcommercialuse.com

Comments(27 comments)

this is great, and the concept of anonymity is even more fantastic.
[comment edited]

Posted by oberdone on 18/10/07, 1:59 pm

Whatever happened to the eco-friendly / environment-conscious graphic design fad? (featured in Creative Review not long ago coincidentally).

Love the graphics.

Posted by Grez on 18/10/07, 2:41 pm

Oo-er, FLYPOSTING? Whatever next?!! Not seen much of that around Shoreditch, how terribly urban and edgy!

Posted by AAA on 18/10/07, 3:07 pm

As it seems the post is edited? I am really happy you did this :)
Always trusting the great minds of CR.

keep up the good work! :!

Posted by oberdone on 18/10/07, 4:11 pm

beautiful graphics

Posted by tom on 18/10/07, 4:21 pm

“As it seems the post is edited? I am really happy you did this”

We didn’t want to be spoilsports - but we WILL reveal all in due course

Posted by Patrick on 18/10/07, 4:23 pm

I agree Patrick. Let the fire live for a bit and then you reveal it all ;)

Posted by oberdone on 18/10/07, 4:33 pm

Bagged a couple myself. Though mine were slightly easier to get hold of, being stuck up with blu-tac.

Posted by Rich Breakmould on 18/10/07, 6:39 pm

“All designers are wankers” yep! when I see stuff like this turning up, I’d be inclined to agree!

Yet another guerilla marketing ploy by a print company, but people refrain from trying to peel these shiny objects of desire off the walls, you will no doubt be able to buy this neatly packaged at Blanka!

Posted by Cynical on 19/10/07, 9:13 am

Could someone fix the link to notforcommercialuse.com, please? (It needs http:// prefixing to it.) Ta!

Posted by ManxStef on 19/10/07, 11:09 am

sorry, that’s fixed now

Posted by Patrick on 19/10/07, 11:15 am

Yet more graphic design aimed solely at other graphic designers.

“All designers are wankers” eh? What a mind blowing statement - jeepers its even got some swearing in it!

I guess this was intended to be a controversial pronouncement causing shock and moral outrage across the land. What slight impact this may have had is entirely negated by the feeble application of a gold block over the offending word.

I’m sorry but this is one of the most vapid projects I have seen for a long time.

Posted by AAA on 19/10/07, 11:59 am

“I’m sorry but this is one of the most vapid projects I have seen for a long time.”
I have to agree with you there, all this graphic design fetish stuff leaves me feeling pretty cold and empty!

Posted by Cynical on 19/10/07, 12:29 pm

looks a lot like build to me, i think on his video on his website you can actually see this work lying around the studio. i dont get it, still making up my mind on it.

Posted by long john on 19/10/07, 1:54 pm

What’s wrong with a little beauty in our lives, not everything has to be worthy or mind blowing. Life needs both for a balance. Who said Vapid is a bad thing?
-
Side Note
-
AAA: Why not post with your real name if you feel so strongly against it?

Posted by James Greenfield on 19/10/07, 3:27 pm

You should rather check out the real stuff:

http://www.szene-in-hamburg.de/bildergallery/albums/userpics/10001/normal_rasputin_hamburg.jpg

(As seen in Hamburg, Grosse Freiheit)

Posted by Tommi on 19/10/07, 4:46 pm

I think fly posters fulfil an important role, informing the general public of events, music releases etc, which we might not get to hear of in other ways due to the cost of advertising. However, I was sent this pack of postcards and looked at the site, but find the whole thing very annoying. How many times do we want to see a web page show the same poster pinned to a different wall?? Very uncreative and very soulless. Next time just write on the wall if you have to. The words will still be boring and derivative, but at least you’ll save some trees.

Posted by Gary on 19/10/07, 5:04 pm

“What’s wrong with a little beauty in our lives, not everything has to be worthy or mind blowing. Life needs both for a balance. Who said Vapid is a bad thing?”

—-

It’s not really that beutiful though, just a varing number of print techniques, set in sans serif and some rather wonky or vapid if you prefer messages! “Designers are wankers” “without you/me/us you are nothing” it’s no Guy Debord.

One for the geeks IMO!

Posted by CraigS on 19/10/07, 6:49 pm

Definetly Build!! Good job, amazing work!!!!

Posted by Tomi Lahdesmaki on 21/10/07, 4:51 am

The posters look cool. In fact I think they look quite badass. I wish I lived in the area of dispersion so I could nab a few. I also think I understand the “point” of the whole campaign, although I am not entirely sure. And if people want to put up posters that look awesome and be secretive that’s cool. It’s not exactly legal so of course anonymity in this case is going to be desired.

The actual textual content of the posters does seems a little… meh… bland, but that’s merely my opinion and the visual beauty far outweighs that aspect for me.

So anyway, like I said, in this case I understand the secretiveness of it all. But going off on a slight tangent here - why is it that in the uber-hip design circles things are often so obscure and secretive (or aloof) when it’s not necessary as in the case of illegal street art? For example, the KDU. Why can’t they just be straight forward about their shit. I still can’t figure out what the hell the KDU *really is*. A collevtive, I get that. So what? Why do I care? Can I join? I get the feeling probably not because I am not a cool cat designer… I feel like people try to create this mystery about themselves and it comes off as being so goddam pretentious it makes me mentally blacklist certain designers just for doing it. It’s just not my style - maybe that’s it. I prefer it when people make an effort to be approachable and humble in all they do.

I’m not claiming that the person behind this NFCU project is being pretentious. In other arenas he seems quite an approachable guy. Not that I know him personally or anything but I have read some interviews. The above rant was just something that this NFCU project got me thinking about.

Posted by Steve Waterson on 21/10/07, 4:03 pm

Build and Generation Press have done quite well with the Symbiosis project, if that’s what this is a product of…

I find it quite ironic that the tag of ‘Not for commercial use’ is used when it will actually highten the profile of GP as a printing company…

And if you;re going to have anyone that can show off the printing process well then MCP’s your man.

Posted by Andy C on 21/10/07, 7:55 pm

a lots of times it might start like this, then it end up commecial anyway. as soon it get a litel fame. then there will be selling tees, poster, pins, stickers, etc.
same thing with underground music, they get fame and say well we need $$$ too.

lets see whats next.

( å )

Posted by akrok on 21/10/07, 8:51 pm

Beauty we all know is personal. As for its no Guy Debord, no it isn’t, its some posters for a print company people want to nick and stick up at home. Its not political or commentary or even rebelious art. Its some design.

Posted by James Greenfield on 22/10/07, 3:55 pm

hi, may somebody tell me the name of the type that appears in the first pic ?
i’d been looking for it since a log time ago…

please
i’ll be really happy if you coul send me an e mail :)

Posted by paco on 16/11/07, 11:05 pm

*quite badass*? i never knew there were shades of badass. perhaps a graphic of the sliding scale of badass should be forthcoming.

Posted by cormac on 04/12/07, 6:22 pm

these have been floating around for a while now, is there a point to it all?

Posted by james mason on 12/12/07, 4:20 pm

we need more total beauty & excess like this. I feel in love! The GOLD! THE PINK! london is the best!

Posted by Richard, nyc. on 28/02/08, 8:29 pm

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