Baby, What's Your Sign?
In the year 2005, Mike and I took our very first Illustrator class and we decided to team up to work on a sign project together! We created fake signs and put them all around campus at Cal State Long Beach, then documented each posted sign with a photo. I don't have the original Illustrator designs anymore, but luckily we still have these fantastic images that I am able to share with you today. So enjoy!
Caution! Bees in Stairwell
We began this crazy project idea because there were actually bees in the stairway on the North side of campus and they had put up a handwritten cardboard sign warning students to take another route. So I put up this sign we made in the adjacent stairway and watched as students reacted to this threatening claim.
We got this idea from a sign at the zoo, warning people if they leaned too far into the enclosure they would surely be met by a hungry alligator's toothy doom. Obviously, there were no scary gators on our college campus, but since I was covering up an actual road sign, I didn't leave this one up for too long!
Caution Steep Hill!
I thought the runaway wheelchair was a funny personal touch because back in 2001, when we visited Walt Disney World in Florida, we rented a wheelchair and as I was being pushed, I started heading down a very steep hill. As I turned around to yell at Mike for going way too fast, I realized that he was far behind me, running to catch up to MY runaway wheelchair! I quickly applied the breaks (on one side at least) and spun around like a race car pulling the parking brake. It was terrifying (but hilarious now that it's been a few years.)
So, again this was all done on a college campus, where you and I both know that lots of stuff happens in public bathrooms that shouldn't! (More than I'd ever care to know.) So Mike and I were all too familiar with this lovely pass time...
No Barfing!
I really hope this one got quite a few private laughs throughout the day (or at least until the cleaning crew came in and undoubtedly removed it.)
This one is a bathroom related one too:
MEN
So originally I was going to make a Women's sign like this one, since typically girls must cross their legs while waiting in an inevitably long restroom queue, but I thought it played much funnier as a Men's sign!
Dangerous Gases
And what's a little toilet humor without the mention of toots, gas, farts, or smells?! So I posted this one on the baby changing station, when you open it up. I really hope some mom got a kick out of it, but I did not hang around in the restrooms all day waiting to find out.
This next idea came to be when a graffiti etcher took to the Pasadena City College parking structure elevator sign a few years earlier and added devil horns and a torch to the man taking the stairs. Too good an idea, not to pass up Although, arson is a terrible thing, so sadly this one stayed up only long enough to take a quick photo of it.
In case of Fire use stairway
The next sign really captures the spirit of the era in which we made them. In August of 2005 Hurricane Katrina barrelled through New Orleans, flooding the city causing so much death and destruction. With this on our minds and in our newspapers and on our televisions, we incorporated this theme onto just one sign.
Floor slippery when wet
Too soon??? Maybe, but donations were always welcomed so I added "Please help support Victims of Katrina" as more of an awareness statement for the time.
In fact, that Fall semester we tried to add an Art History Class a little late in the semester due to some scheduling changes and we must have looked all disheveled and desperate when we approached the professor. He heard us out, then promptly asked if WE were victims of Hurricane Katrina? Our jaws dropped. "No," we said, "but can we still get into your class???" (We did - and it was an awesome class too!)
And lastly, this one speaks for itself, again - being on a college campus and all... And it really made us really laugh at the time (and our Art teacher Kyle too). On a side note, in the 7th grade for Halloween, I dressed up as a cigarette with a NO SMOKING sign hanging around my neck. (But that's a story for another day.)
NO Smoking
We had a really fun time coming up with these, putting them together in Illustrator (which Mike really excels at now), posting them in various locations one day and documenting the whole process.
How do you think these signs would translate today? Can you think of several of your own you would like to put up somewhere? Would they be MEMES instead though?
This was our first taste of guerrilla art and seeing peoples' reactions to these, made everything so much more rewarding. I could see us expanding upon this project now here in 2017. Hmmm... food for thought.
Thanks for viewing!
-Crystal Olguin
