Last year Gilberto Kassab, Mayor of Sao Paulo had grown tired of the visual pollution generated by the 8000 or so advertising hoardings ‘littering’ the cityscape. The Clean City Laws were introduced at the start of 2007 and its biggest impact is the removal of any external branding, city-wide.

A city without branding sounds either Victorian or some kind of strange Ballardian future vision, rather than an indication of the now. For most of us, inhaling brandscapes every second of every minute of every day, as we traverse our towns and cities, the look of a city with blank canvases where posters would reside creates for a sense of the, well, spooky.Brazilian photographer Tony De Marco has recorded the eerie residues of a city lacking in logos. It is an indication of the power of branding that the loss of logos can leave us feeling empty.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Memes - units of cultural transmission. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.