Outdoor Advertising Images in the ROAD 2.0 Project

[Note: This is a guest post from Rita Johnston, Project Digitization Assistant for the NHPRC-funded ROAD 2.0 project. Thanks, Rita!]

ROAD 2.0 (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions) is a project to digitize images of billboards described in the ROAD database and match them with existing metadata. What I find interesting about the collection as a whole is that it offers an abundant variety of examples of advertising throughout the 20th century, and the content often uniquely reflects the times in which the advertisements were designed. This WWII-era advertisement encourages citizens to pay their taxes on time by linking paying taxes with the war effort. [ROAD metadata record: AAA0618]

The majority of images in the ROAD collection are of outdoor advertising, but there are some notable exceptions. This is an example of advertising artwork for Jantzen swimwear by F. Clark (probably married Jantzen artists Frank and Florenz Clark). [ROAD metadata record: AAA7001]

Many of the outdoor ad images from the 70s and 80s are fairly similar to today’s billboards. One thing that has changed is that there are far fewer cigarette billboards today due to stronger regulation of tobacco advertising. This image from around 1980 for Camel cigarettes stands out for its implication that smoking Camels will make men look more individualistic and attractive to women. [ROAD metadata record: AAA6348]