Ads Around the World

It's strange how you can often identify a country by the quality of its printed advertisements.  In the last few years I've been living all over Asia, and at this point I could be dropped in any city across the region and guess where I am after looking at just a couple of ads (without looking at the language, that is).

Mongolia is crazy basic, with un-UV-protected print ads fading quickly in the sun.  The distinctive Cyrillic characters just add to the worn out cool factor. Thailand hasn't seemed to have grasped the fact that photos need to be suitable for large format printing to look good on a blown up scale.  Their ads are pixellated as hell, and they love to use fonts that make the Thai alphabet even more unreadable.

Japanese and Korean ads, of course, look just like any western country, though they love to use digital signage for everything since they like to think they're living in a Bladerunner future.

In the US it's a little different.  Duratrans as far as the eye can see.  I know a company that does Duratrans printing in San Francisco, and they must be coining it.  If you don't know, Duratrans is the generic term for backlit images, and the Americans just eat it up.  With good reason, too, as it looks damned cool.  If you're looking for Duratans printing Los Angeles you should check out the link for a few examples of what I'm talking about.

So, what do the ads look like in your country?  Can you beat Duratrans, or are your national ads closer to the faded Soviet style of the Mongolians?