upside down and backwards

A hallway at the San Francisco Tennis Club has a bunch of early photographs of San Francisco, including this one (snapped with my iPhone; apologies for the perspective and quality) of the west side of The Embarcadero in 1913.

What I love about this photo (and it's probably hard to see here) is the billboard for Owl Cigars, with the reversed mirror image type. When you quickly walk by the photo of the billboard you do a double take, and I spent a few minutes confirming that this wasn't some weird artifact of the photo itself. (The photo didn't appear to be doctored at all.) The effect of this as a massive billboard must have been something. I'm no student of outdoor advertising, but while I can definitely remember plenty of instances of seeing trompe-l'oeil effects in billboards, I don't think I've seen something as "simply stunning" in a long time.

My colleague Sean Williford pointed out that The Standard Hotels does something related with their logo, turning their simple typeface upside down.

I love both of these -- simple twists that force the casual observer to stop, spend a bit more time processing what they're seeing and become memorable because of their simplicity. That said, if everyone started flipping their type around, everyday life would be more than a bit annoying.

Who else has done this kind of thing well?

Comments

[Sean Williford]

There is also some power in simple character substitutions, as in the advertising and brand for the shop SQecial Media in Lexington, Kentucky. The legend is that the name started as a classic 1-character typo, resulting from the printer not minding his p's and q's. At any rate, I find the substitution more arresting than other typographic trends, such as the fad for syllabic r's.

[Michael Sippey]

Simple character substitution can be good, esp if it's done with purpose like Squecial. Take it to the extreme and you end up with l33t speak. All things in moderation, I suppose.

[npdoty]

I think this is a pretty common trick. In Times Square, a waitress will stand outside a restaurant holding a menu to entice people into the restaurant. She holds it upside down (as if by accident) until a tourist walking by says smugly, "You're holding that upside down" to which she quickly responds, "Yes, but at least I got you to look at our menu, now why don't you come inside?"

[Social Networking Designer]

Typo or not, unintentional or done in purpose, these tricks sure makes us take a second look..and sometimes take the bait.

[jkottke]

David Carson's graphic design work used this technique a lot. His designs were visual puzzles, simple enough to draw your attention but then you had to do a little work to decode what he was attempting to say.

[John Dowdell]

Hmm, strange, the Library of Congress hosts a famous 1905 film of Market St, and the Owl Cigars sign seems to be on the same building, but forwards.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/papr:@field(NUMBER+@band(lcmp003+01142s1))

It's the third video, right at the end. Maybe they put up a new backwards sign after The Fire? But why...?

Google's database lists other sites with Owl Cigar ads (try term "'owl cigar' -white"), but none of them are backwards. I don't seem to get any meaningful hits with terms like "backwards", "reversed", "francisco" and such.

I'm sure there's a story behind this, but I wonder what it might be....

jd

[Ezra]

I'm surprised you didn't mention the practice of putting your business name backwards on the front a truck, so that when folks look in their rear-view mirrors they see it frontwise. It always gives me a kick when I see it, either mirrored (in a place where it doesn't belong) or not (so that it's backward and looks funny)--so maybe it belongs in the same category.

I wonder if there may have been a big window on the East side of Embarcadero to catch the reflection of this one?