Meadow Blog

Billboards are big and bold while texture can be more subtle and is often left out of a concept, or at best it is an afterthought. A flat, single-color background with no texture often does look well, flat. A relevant texture adds a unique dimension to a design that can elevate it from amateurish to professional.

Last summer Meadow launched our first digital Rotary Network in Eugene and Springfield, OR. Instead of playing on a single structure, an ad would rotate across digitals, playing the same number of ads but in different areas, to reach a wider audience.

As 2025 begins let’s reminisce about the 10 best designs Meadow installed in the last quarter of 2024!

Recently Meadow Outdoor installed a huge project that has been months in the making. After bringing in Creative experts and creating custom installations, Bushnell University’s billboard display is complete. With a custom, illuminated pop-out extension towering over the billboard, this display will captivate the imagination of anyone who sees it.

In today’s digital age, some organizations are finding success with a more traditional approach: billboards. Recent campaigns across various sectors have shown how this classic medium can effectively attract talent and boost recruitment efforts.

Hurricane Helene and Milton swept through the southeastern United States on September 26th and October 9th respectively, but the cleanup and rebuilding have just begun. It’s a race against time as the weather gets colder and the days get shorter. Winter is almost here and the need for shelter is immediate.

Today’s billboards share a legacy of creative talent and innovation with their predecessors. While vinyl wraps dominate modern displays, advancements in materials and technology have expanded the potential for spectacular advertisements. As it does today, past billboard advertising relied heavily on the skills of creative teams and installation crews. However, the processes were analog, not digital. The physical demand of creating billboard displays without giant printers, computer-assisted graphic design, or lightweight panels meant that production could take many more weeks than it does now. In the late 1960s or so, Hills Brothers Coffee embarked on an ad campaign featuring dinosaurs, cavemen, and the tagline “GOOD strong coffee.” What follows is a step-by-step photographic journey of one of the campaign’s billboard advertisements, from sketch to installation.

Typography is one of the most difficult elements of a billboard design to get right. But it’s so crucial to the design because that is what ultimately communicates the client’s message. A billboard’s typography needs to be readable, but that is just getting over the bar for what billboard artwork should be. The best billboard artwork uses typography in unexpected ways and sometimes even breaks the industry mold.

Billboard artwork can take a lot of time effort, and expertise to create, but the end result is always so satisfying. Now that the third quarter of 2024 is over, let’s look back at the top 10 best displays!

To follow the brand guidelines or not to follow, that is the question. Brand guidelines can give graphic designers a solid starting point and sometimes even inspiration. Other times they are not well thought out, can be unnecessarily limiting, and can hamstring an innovative design.