Anyone who wants to have some fun, hands-on marketing experience should definitely try creating perspective text. John Allie and I gave a whack at a guerilla art project with no real name as a way to promote the Long River Review’s 2010 release party. The art form was created by Axel Peemöller, a German graphic designer, who used the power of perspective to paint directions in a parking garage, like “Up,” that seem to hang in mid-air. Peemöller seems to get his inspiration for these practical optical illusions from M.C. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist famous for his mathematically calculated art such as Drawing Hands (1948) or Relativity (1953) that use the quirks of perception.

John and I decided to use colored tape to achieve the same effect found in Peemöller’s parking garage (mostly because painting public property might have been considered vandalism and would have required Professor Pelizzon to bail us out of jail or at least pay our criminal fines). We also decided to create our message on a bus stop, hoping it would attract more attention in such a high traffic area.

So, one person is needed to hold up a piece of transparent paper with one eye closed in order to see the message, or in our case the LRR logo, appear on the bus stop. Taking direction, the other person then begins to tape the message down on the ground, and onto the bus stop according to the perspective. It took about 2 hours to complete the entire design, and closing one eye for that long tends to give one a twitch. Unfortunately, I proved to have weak perspective skills, and had a hard time directing John, especially as the sun was dipping into dusk and finally into the night. Taping the design was quite a bizarre experience because you can’t see the message unless you stand at the right angle. The result is the illusion that someone tried to randomly gift-wrap the bus stop in blue tape.

The event attracted numerous passerby, who seemed just as curious to find out the end result as we were. It turned out to be a fantastic publicity stunt as people waiting for the bus or walking by watched our progress and asked to learn more about our cause. We told people about the Long River Review as we worked and most people were outright amazed, entertained, and walked away knowing more about UConn’s literary journal. So, if you want a fun, effective way to promote an event, cause or organization perspective text guerilla art is definitely the way to go. To see pictures of Peemöller’s parking garage experiment go to http://www.autoblog.com/2008/08/04/parking-garage-signage-depends-on-your-perspective/ and to see our home-made version for LRR go to its facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2232280068&ref=ts.