Small Art as Advertising

Street art styling has been frequently used in advertising but it's less common to find street art used as an ad itself.

Throughout the streets of Reykjavik 101 you'll find these small sheep lacquered to the walls. They catch the eye as strong, simple graphic. However once you hit the main shopping street downtown you realize...

that they are a clever advertisement for the Osoma store. This is one of the first examples I have seen of this kind of co-opting of street art for advertising (rather than using street art in advertisements).

This cat appears in a number of forms - sometimes fanged, sometimes winged.

Reykjavik 101

Walking the streets of Reykjavik, Misa and I discovered a surprisingly strong street graphic culture.

This cat appears in a number of forms - sometimes fanged, sometimes winged.

The milk cartons are everywhere - on the wall outside the bar, printed on US postal service labels, on the side of construction pits. The artists selects locations for color and often uses edges of walls to wrap the flat graphic into a 3D shape.

The milk carton in context of other popular themes: the floating eyes, the ghosts, and others.

The flying eyes on the wall of the Sirkus flea market.

A ghost or perhaps an octopus. The character often looks like the Ms. Pacman ghosts, but the shape may refer to something else.

The ghost wrapped in a corner.

I liked the off-kilter shape of this rabbit form.