Sydney’s City Lights airs its dirty laundry in a new campaign for Art & About Sydney via Alphabet

Creative agency Alphabet have transformed Sydney’s City Lights into a tell-all clothesline for Art & About Sydney 2013, airing the dirty laundry of the city’s inhabitants.

Art & About Sydney is a collaborative arts festival where every Sydney street, laneway, building site, intersection and thoroughfare is a canvas for creation and storytelling. Now in its 12th year, Art & About Sydney 2013 is hosting more than 50 associated public art events, from interactive experiences and exhibitions to workshops and photography challenges.

Alphabet won the opportunity to create an urban installation in Sydney’s City Lights for Art & About Sydney after a competitive tender against a number of creative agencies. The task: respond to the 2013 Art & About theme: ‘Privates Lives…Public Places’, while also providing a platform for the full range of 2013 printed and online collateral including outdoor applications and onsite signage. The annual festival is very public by nature, and Art & About Sydney 2013 will reveal more than ever about the city and its inhabitants.

Sydney-based Alphabet approached the challenge head-on.

Says Ashleigh Steel, designer: “In private we can be anything we like, but what happens when we hang ourselves out to dry for the world to see?”

Blurring the line between private and public, Alphabet has branded classic white laundry with confessional statements and private thoughts, revealing those quirky obsessions and secrets we all instinctively try to suppress. These short, sharp snippets of thought explore commons themes, promoting conversation amongst the public and asking people to consider their own ‘private parts’.

Says Paul Clark, co-creative director: “The blurred line between public and private is of particular relevance in our age of social media. People seem eager to tell-all in an online sphere, where they can construct a version of their true selves, editing out the imperfect parts. We wanted to strip it all back and find out what lies beneath our manicured exteriors.”

The tone of lightness and humour is integral to Alphabet’s campaign, as it aims to celebrate our idiosyncrasies (“I like to step on particularly crunchy leaves”) and unearth amusing past secrets that have perhaps been weighing on our consciences (“I cheated on a maths test in grade 3”).

Each garment is stamped with individually hand written text which creates a highly personal aesthetic, suggesting that these are confessions from real individuals with real personalities.

Alphabet went on to develop their own handwritten typeface to be used throughout the Art & About Sydney 2013 campaign roll out which includes an interactive “Secrets Screen” in Pitt St Mall. Sydney-siders are being asked to reveal their own secrets, this time specifically about their city, to be broadcast on freshly laundered garments on a JCDecaux innovation panel throughout the duration of the festival.

The 15 City Lights housing Alphabet’s ‘dirty laundry’ campaign for the month will fill our streets with a dash of welcome humour and intruige, as Art & About Sydney 2013 becomes the city’s biggest tattle tale.

Click here to visit the Art & About Sydney 2013 website.

Client: Art & About

Designers: Lara Juriansz & Ashleigh Steel