The Best Brochure Ever!

It’s a rare day at work when another product brochure isn’t added to the ever growing pile on the edge of my desk. So you’ll appreciate that it takes something pretty special to catch my attention. Well the new Townscape brochure is certainly special…

You’ll see from the snapshot above that they’ve attempted to give their range of concrete benches, bollards and bins some international glamour, with flashy background images of spectacular locations. They’ve also, and how can I put this, decided to turn the graphics up to 11... Yes it’s busy, it‘s very colourful too, but I just get the impression that it’s not been put together by someone who earns their living as a graphic designer. More on this later, but I think that the indications are, that their photoshopping wasn’t done by the same people that gave Kate Winslett the figure of Karen Carpenter for her Vanity Fair cover. In my mind, I’m imagining that the Townscape sales team have perhaps not had a great deal to do over recent months. At some point someone had the bright idea that instead of just sitting around playing solitaire and enjoying the occasional nip of the cooking sherry, they should make their product brochure ‘a bit more exciting’.

I should probably give you a bit of background about Townscape and where they fit into my world. Townscape are the masters of exposed aggregate concrete, which was incredibly popular for benches and bins in the 70’s and 80’s (see above). They even produced a ‘bomb-proof’ bin, for councils that were a bit worried about all the Irish people hanging round their town centres. However, it strikes me that Townscape are like the Englebert Humperdink of the street furniture world - successful in one era, but forever associated with it and their more contemporary work hasn‘t really matched their previous success. None of Townscapes newer products really work for me, and I’d offer the ‘golf’ related products below, as an illustration of this (see also Enge’s “Lesbian Seagull”).

However, I still regularly specify their products and I have enough interest in them to actually open the brochure and not just chuck it away. You see like Englebert has the classic ‘Please Release Me’, Townscape have the Citizen Jet bench. The image shown below is from Poole Arts Centre (thanks to Dave Prosser and Roger Griffiths Associates), and highlights what I think is so good about it. It’s an incredibly simple and chic concrete product, that really works in a wide range of settings. I literally specify it all the time.

Anyway, back to the brochure. As I leafed through I found myself feeling at first a little bemused, then incredulous, before finally bursting into laughter. I’ve put a few selected pages from the brochure in for people to enjoy. They reminded me a little bit of watching one of those old Jason and the Argonauts films, or maybe the first time you saw Frankie Howard in his little mauve, wig…

I can only surmise that either the graphics department of Townscape are all visually dyslexic, or that they’ve got a really great sense of humour. I really hope it’s the latter. Well done guys, your brochure cheered me up no end!

Billy Bollard

I’ve been mildly obsessed with ‘Billy Bollard’, ever since I heard that Marshall's had produced an impact-resistant, plastic post, shaped like a small child. We actually tried to order one as a sample in our office, and I was bitterly disappointed when it never turned up (did they think we were taking the piss?). Suffice to say that I've been hoping to come across one on my travels.

Hence it was pleasant surprise, when I spotted some on a detour to work last week. A whole bunch of Billy and Belinda Bollards have been installed outside Avenue Road School in Clarendon Park, Leicester. In reality, they're even more bizarre than I expected. Being so much smaller than real children is a little bit jarring - I found myself wondering if I'd accidentally eaten some sort of psychotropic plant!

The idea (and I can nearly see what they're getting at), is that drivers see the "school children" and unconsciously slow down and drive more carefully. Supposedly thinking, "I'd better watch out for those children at the edge of the road." Unfortunately, I think it's more likely that drivers will think think they've inadvertently fallen asleep at the wheel, and are now having a macabre nightmare.



Don't look in the eyes! They'll turn you into Ferrocast, imitation cast-iron!!!



They just look sinister to me. I found myself imaging an evil partnership between the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dr. Gunther Von Hagens; enticing under-sized orphans off the street and into their caravan with offers of Sunny Delight and Haribo's, before whisking them off to their factory to turn them into shrunken, plasticised half-child/half-bollard hybrids.




"My friend Gunther will give you all the candy you ever need! Ha ha ha!!!"



Or maybe it's like an episode of Doctor Who; the Billy Bollards are quietly positioning themselves around our cities, before they eventually rise up and conquor the world!



"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?"



I like how they've done an asian version of Billy Bollard, seeing as how we're in Leicester (Billy being the original boy and Belinder the girl that followed). How about Billvinder?!?



I'd be interested to hear what other people think of Billy Bollard.