Public poster boards are neither prominent, nor anonymous; they are neither interesting nor boring. They have such low design ambitions that it is hard to say anything about them, to praise or criticize them. Like most urban furniture elements and/or public objects we find in cities, they are numb in terms of design principles, form and public presence. What is the real role of these objects? Are they effective communicating devices? Is their low-tech nature deliberate, adequate? should it be more complex and feature-oriented, to better perform the object's function? The public poster board in the image is from the Italian city of Bardolino. Sited at the entrance of the city’s largest public park, its function is to display local information about cultural activities and social announcements. It works from the top down: this object is the medium that municipal authorities and/or cultural institutions use to keep citizens and visitors informed. As an object, it is rather meaningless: a structure of bent metal tubes embedded in the sidewalk, supporting a surface that holds paper posters, notices and announcements. Its dark grey color swiftly dissolves into the urban background, per se chaotic and rather incomprehensible. I did not see anyone stopping by to read any of the announcements. Perhaps the effectiveness of this object is directly related to the graphic quality of the materials presented in it: would people really stop to look at high-quality posters? I am pretty sure they would not.
