Outdoor advertising before billboards


Because of my interest in history, and advertising, I really enjoy looking at the Duke University site called "ROAD", which has thousands of images of outdoor advertising, mostly billboards. My old advertising teacher would have been fussy about what to call these things, as most of them are technically posters, some are murals (like the image at the top of this post), and some are billboards. For practical purposes, they're all billboards, and to me it's historically interesting to know why they're called that.

Although these images look interesting, and quaint, in reality they were just as annoying to the people at the time as any other type of unwanted "eye pollution", like "pop-up ads" on the internet. And it had gotten way out of hand by the time most cities stepped up to control it. It was so long ago that these ads were called "bills". That is, "advertising bills" that were slapped up everywhere, sometimes painted, sometimes plastered up. If you've ever seen a sign saying "post no bills" it's how cities used to prohibit random advertising from being put up everywhere.



So outdoor advertising companies agreed to only post on specific boards, that had been approved for placement by the city. That's a board for the bills, or a billboard. And looking through the Duke site, I see that the companies made a real effort to make these boards as beautiful as possible. But of course, they were still just advertising, so by the 1960s, Federal laws were put into place to cut down on how ugly they made America's highways. The effort was spearheaded by a Presidential First Lady, Ladybird Johnson, if you want to go Google her.


Speaking for myself, as a graphic designer, I've always had a fascination for this sort of thing. Done well it can add vibrancy, and sparkle, to a city. Done incorrectly, it's just ugly.
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