New York is a truly wonderful city, particularly for creatives. You can barely walk down a street in this city without encountering a barrage of colors, advertising, art, architecture, and any number of inspiration, its is literally a creative playground. I took the opportunity to take some pictures while in the area of the 35th and Broadway, as well as when I was in the Subway catching my train back to Brooklyn. These are the ones that really caught my attention.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

With all the hype surrounding the apple iPad I’m not surprised that something like this was out there. You can find this as pretty easily if you happen to be near the Macy’s in Manhattan.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

This as for “The Tudors” on Showtime, really caught m attention, as this is the sort of thing I would have loved to have worked on myself. This was one of many ads I came across in the subway when getting ready to hop on my train.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

Simple and clean, this JCPenny ad is striking and minimalist and stands out in stark contrast to everything in the surrounding area, and it worked well enough since I soon found myself shopping there picking up a new shirt and tie.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

More ads from the NYC subway, really one of the best places to get shots of ads believe it or not.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

Even the taxi cabs of New York are littered with advertising. You’ll see everything from department store ads, to as for movies like new hit KICK ASS.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

A few more ads from the subway.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

The Clash of the Titans ad was the sort of thing any designer would cut off his left ear (art history joke, lol) in order to do. I love this particular ad, though I will have to admit to being disappointed with movie itself.

Roberto Blake Empire-State-Of-Ads

This last ad was for Footlocker and one thing that I found interesting about it, is that I feel there was an inside design joke hidden in the ad. “AIR” was done in CMYK and those colors were subtly worked into the ad itself. I feel like this was something only other designers would understand the significance of or even notice, so I could only smirk when I saw this from the street as I snapped my picture.

All of these shots were my own original photography by the way. I shot them on my trusty Nikon D40. Any of you designers out there looking to transition to a Digital SLR a D40 is a great start for you. I use it mostly because its the lightest DSLR you’re going to find, and since I have lug around a laptop bag (until I get a photo/laptop combo bag) along with my camera bag, that was a huge plus for me. Its a 6MP camera but it has a great deal of versatility and allows for shooting manual, auto, or a number of programed presets. I have 3 lenses for it, and an old flash from when I used to shoot Minolta.

I hope you all found these ads inspiring and I feel that all designers and artist should visit the Empire State at least once in a while, like the song [Empire State of Mind]says “This place will make you feel brand new, these lights will inspire you…”

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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