S G HIGHWAY – an overview…..
The SG highway in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, is one of the important roads that is running across the city. This road at one point of time was the boundary of the city. Now in response to immense globalisation and urban development, the extents of the city have spread further away from the centre point or the core of Ahmedabad. The cultural activities have shifted their base to the peripheries of the city embarking upon drastic architectural, construction as well as planning developments.
Reallocations of cultural activities lead to a redefinition of the highway. It is now perceived as one of the major streets in the city. As we say, ‘city is where the people are’, visual identity of the road changed, bringing in investments from big brands, visually attractive shop facades and a trunk load of hoardings.
S G highway if looked at from a visual point of view, is cluttered and over burdened by gigantic hoardings.
According to basic categories of environmental visual communication, the road can be looked at from the following basic perspectives. Static graphics form a major part of the view, comprising of basic signages, logos of brands and signs with signals. Being a commercial hub, the road caters to a series of malls, all publicising brands and products of the modern age. A series of logos and publicity images hover over each junction, screening local as well as defined advertisements. From an ice cream laari walla with an umbrella with advertisements of local cellular company to the reliance mobile hoarding on the façade of the building, static or stationary hoardings form the visual language of the street.
Considering the fact that the so called highway caters to an intense gamut of traffic, the positioning as well the scale of the static graphics is imperative.
The hoardings have an urban scale to them with reference to the coming traffic as well as the cone of vision of the viewer viewing from a distance. Hence the scale of the hoardings adorns a definite scale and viewing distance.
Building facades on the periphery of the road have been treated to respond to the exposure to the public passer by. Facades have been treated graphically using structural materials itself. Extra large hoardings or super graphics have been strategically positioned on to the façade so as to be viewed from a far off distance. Responding to the direction of the coming traffic, reliance mobile advertisement follows a particular type face rotated to suit the context.
Significantly, the publicity items have used the primary colour as their base colour palette. To be noticed from a distance, the hoardings illustrate the use of neutral shades as their base colours, enhancing the material to be publicized.
As individual hoardings, the placement and the scales are quite appropriate. Unfortunately the collective picture is chaotic, clustered and scattered. The publicity arrangement does not follow a particular system or a specified pattern. Conclusively, the over powering, unorganized hoardings have destroyed the over all visual environment of the highway.
An initiative has to be taken to string the visual elements together. Road signages and dividers may follow a common colour code for better visual perception. The junctions have a series of small bill boards specifying the company responsible for environmental concern of that junction. This could have been indicated in a better way, incorporating landscape into advertising. The billboards on repetitive street light poles can become a part of a ‘street pattern’. The building facades can follow a particular system of facades so as to congregate the elements of street graphics. Let the street be a representative of developing Indian culture with an essence of modernity and globalization.
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Every journey has a beginning. Everyone’s journey must begin somewhere, a departure from somewhere, a step out the door, a movement beyond the cycles of everyday activities and lifestyle patterns, a step in a new direction. This first step is comprised of a fundamental change, the representation of an individual’s movement from familiar surroundings and interactions to a transitory existence based on new experiences, confusion and strangeness. The traveler’s first step on a journey represents the beginning of a process that will give the traveler a new perspective, a new way to see and understand the world. Though this first step is an important one, this single step cannot possibly encompass all the sensations and sights one may experience while traveling. Each succeeding step on a journey is just as important as the first, and each step represents a new direction and a new set of possibilities for the traveler. With every step, the traveler is engaging in a process that makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange.
When one steps out of the confines of the city and hits the “broad” expanse of asphalt called S.G.Road, a plethora of blaring advertisement hoardings seem to invite and at the same time mock the inquisitive consumer. A feeling of déjà vu settles on any traveler moving down the strip of Las Vegas with the garish lights and blown out bimbo hoardings that seem to hunker down and lay out a feast for the weary traveler. Is this what this city edge has become? A palate of materialistic pleasure offered to anybody willing to ‘shell out the buck’. A beast of a mega mall with the sky as the atrium spanning the entire north –south stretch, with shops, multiplexes, showrooms, restaurants, cafes, hotels, kiosks temples, crematoriums, etc. all enveloped in its belly. With the city growing at such an alarming rate and globalization not lagging far behind, it’s important that the needs of the money welding consumer are met, but at what cost? One can only envision a city divided within 10 years, with the poorer “downtown” district in the east. What were once lush green farmlands and the borders of Ahmadabad’s suburb has now seemingly become the center of town.
As a person who has spent a part of his youth growing up along this strip, watching its transformation has oft left me awe struck. One can only summarize and hope that ugly caterpillar metamorphosis’s into a beautiful butterfly and not some monstrosity of nature, reminding me of the poignancy of what we have become – narrow minded , materialistically driven emotional messes, with too much money to spend and too little time to wonder what to spend it on. Reiterating what Tyler Durden [Brad Pitt] says in “Fight Club”,
“ I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. “
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