If you were at a New York deli or bar recently and suddenly had the urge to jot down an idea, your eyes might have happened upon just what you needed, a piece of paper with blue lines running across like the paper you once used in college.
And it seemed to be everywhere--napkins with blue lines and sugar packets with blue lines, tray liners with blue lines. And if you went to the restroom, there it was again, toilet paper with blue lines.
The lined paper came compliments of New York's School of Visual Arts, and it was really an alternative media campaign to promote the school.
The intent of the campaign was captured in the one-word tagline that appeared at the bottom of each execution: "Think: The School of Visual Arts."
We may think of Visual Arts as art school, and that it is, as its name makes clear, but the purpose of the campaign was to say that it's really more. It's about the creative process. It's about imagination, about thinking.
The campaign was the creation of Frank Anselmo, creative director at New York's KNARF and also the instructor of a course at the school titled "Unconventional Advertising," and it came about when the school's administration asked him to create a campaign to promote the school.
Anselmo first set about to come up with a tagline. He and another instructor kicked around some ideas, and many had the work "think" in it. So they decided to keep it simple and just go with “Think: The School of Visual Arts.”
The idea of using lined school paper followed. Anselmo wanted the medium to be functional, something that would engage people.
What do you do when you have an idea? You reach for a piece of paper, the brain engages, then the hands engage and the idea finds its way onto paper.
The lined items were distributed to New York diners, delis, bars, coffee shops and street vendors, and the campaign ran for about six months.
What surprised Anselmo was that people actually did engage with the campaign.
“I never really thought that people would actually use these items to write anything down on,” he says. “But I saw first-hand many people putting these items to use, except the toilet paper. I did not hang around a bathroom stall enough to notice this.”
