Every Poster Tells A Tourism Story

It mystifies me why more is not made of an aspect of Mallorcan and Spanish history that is, for many people, more relevant and more real than much of the history that tourism bodies would prefer to shove down people’s throats. Indeed, the tourism bodies are missing a trick, because they are sitting on a vast repository of documentation and images that is a record of the very thing they are concerned with and is what intrigues any number of visitors – tourism itself and its history.

In 1985 the Institute of Touristic Studies (part of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce) was established. Its centre of documentation has well over 100,000 documents of various types. Some can be accessed via the internet or, if you happen to be in Madrid, can be seen by visiting the centre (naturally enough, only ever open in the mornings; don’t let’s get too carried away with convenience to the public).

The use of the word document suggests something rather dry. Many of the documents are just that, but not all. Nothing like all, as they include brochures, postcards, photos and posters.

Posters have a particular status in local culture. For some fiestas, they seem more important than the fiestas themselves. Their presentation are events in their own right, and sometimes – for the right and wrong reasons – they become news, as with the poster for the final bullfight in Barcelona (the right reason because it was so highly prized) and for Palma’s most recent San Sebastià fiesta (the wrong reason because the design was plagiarised).

Posters for tourism have a long history, and not just in Spain. They were once, of course, a means of promotion for British seaside resorts, produced by the old “Big Four” regional rail companies and then the nationalised British Railways.

Spanish tourism, by comparison with that to Bridlington or Brighton, is more recent, and the Institute’s astonishing collection of posters covers the second half of the last century. The golden age for the tourism poster, though, was from 1960 to 1980.

One of the first posters in the collection, dating from 1961, suggests that Spanish tourism authorities hadn’t quite got the hang of what was to make Spain a mass tourism destination. A “Castilian Landscape”, it shows a rainbow tumbling from a sky of blue clouds into the horizon of a wheat field.

A year later, however, and the penny has started to drop. Though the posters were all designed to promote Spain (in different languages), images of different parts of the country were used, and so Mallorca, and its beach tourism, features for the first time. A poster in French has a scene of the beach at Formentor. Sunshades made from reeds shield sunbathers, two boats and what looks like a water-skier are in the sea, pines (symbolic of the area) encroach on either side of the foreground. It looks remarkably contemporary; or maybe nothing has really changed.

The choice of Formentor, exclusive then and still exclusive, does perhaps hint at the type of tourism that was being mainly hoped for. In the same year, there is a poster for Torremolinos. Not of what you might expect, but of its golf course. Benidorm appears for the first time in 1966, or at least the name appears; you don’t see any of the resort, just some sail boats on a beach.

As the 1960s progress, you can trace how widely promotion was being conducted. Posters are produced for exhibitions across Europe and even in New York. Historic sites vie with the image of the bullfight and with those of resorts, and Mallorca shows off a second – Cala San Vicente with the iconic shot of the Cavall Bernat horse promontory across the Cala Molins.

The “alternative” tourism of the current day is revealed to be not quite so alternative or new. In addition to the likes of golf, gastronomy appears in 1967; a rustic bodega with an Iberian ham very much in evidence. But by now, mass tourism is being admitted to, and it is Torremolinos again, this time with a beach scene, not packed with people, but in far greater numbers than had been on Formentor beach.

I could go on, but you should see for yourselves. The collection is fascinating and it is made more fascinating because the posters represent images and resorts which mean something, which is the point of much Mallorcan and Spanish tourism history – it is history within people’s own lifetimes. And this is why more should be made of it.

To see the posters, go to http://www.iet.tourspain.es. There is an English section, and you need to click on “documentary funds”, then “catalogues search” and you will come to a list which includes “tourist posters”. Type in “España” where it says “words” in the first box, then put in the dates 1960-1980 and opt for dates ascending or descending.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Invisible Station

I’m making an apology on behalf of “The Bulletin”. If you had gone along to the ferry terminal in Puerto Alcúdia on Sunday and had expected to find some free watersports activities which you could have enjoyed, you would have been disappointed.

I showed a short news item (from Thursday’s paper) to someone in Alcúdia who, how can I put this, is in the know. The jaw dropped, followed by an expression of understanding as to how the mistake had been made. I understood it as well, as it’s a mistake many people are making.

What happened on Sunday was that there were indeed free watersports activities, but they were nothing to do with the terminal or the commercial port. They were part of a promotion, in the form of a “fiesta”, for the estación náutica. And it is this which caused the mistake and causes other mistakes to be made.

The estación náutica doesn’t exist. It is not bricks, mortar, aluminium, glass or any material. It is a “station” without physical manifestation. It is an un-thing. But the concept, and that is all it is – a concept, begs an interpretation of the physical. Of course it does. A station is a thing not an abstraction; hence a not unreasonable confusion with the terminal.

Since the estación naútica concept was first raised in Alcúdia – at the start of 2009 – I have written about it on a few occasions, and I keep making the same point; it is not understandable. The concept is elusive, it doesn’t translate into anything sensible in English (even watersports centre doesn’t work because this can also imply something physical), and it doesn’t even mean much to the Spanish; they also expect to find an actual centre.

This is not Alcúdia’s fault as such. There are other such stations in Spain and in the Balearics. But the confusion that has existed in Alcúdia with regard to the concept makes you wonder if it hasn’t occurred elsewhere. It must have done, and the same mistakes and misinterpretations are surely being made there.

In Alcúdia, however, to make matters less clear, there is a website for this station. It doesn’t work. For a time at the weekend it didn’t even load. Yet, there it was, proudly mentioned on the publicity, assuming it was seen. There was another website, for the “Fiesta del Mar” which is what occurred on Sunday and which was one of a series arranged by the estación náutica people in their different resorts, but it was in Spanish only. At least it worked though.

As part of this fiesta, there was also an evening event. The “orange fiesta”. Nice poster, shame about the language. Catalan only. I had an exchange on Facebook about this. Catalan is an official language and the fiesta was directed at locals. Well yes, up to a point, but Puerto Alcúdia is a tourist resort and why was the tourist office emailing the poster to those, such as myself, who have a stake in the local tourism industry? Moreover, the estación náutica concept is meant to be a way of attracting more tourists, of the so-called quality type.

But Catalan-only material appears all the time. In all sorts of resorts. The estación náutica concept, the publicity in Catalan are different types of example that raise the same question: what thought process lies behind any of this? Is there one?

I had a chat with a tourist about this. Is it stubbornness that results in the Catalan-only publicity? I don’t know that it is. It’s more likely a case that no one stops to really think who they are meant to be marketing to and what they are marketing. But who makes these decisions?

Alcúdia is a tourist resort with a highly diverse market. It would be impractical to put out material in all the languages necessary. But at a minimum it should be in English and German; more so than even Spanish, where tourists are concerned, as the level of Spanish tourism in Alcúdia is well below that of either the UK or Germany.

The counter argument is that Catalan (and Spanish) are the local languages and so this is how it should be. Sorry, but it isn’t much of an argument. Not if the market doesn’t understand either language.

Poor marketing occurs because the starting-point is the wrong way round. It should be the consumer, the intended market or markets, and it is this fundamental thought process that seems to be lacking.

I don’t know that there should be an apology for the mistake in “The Bulletin”. The apology should be coming from somewhere else. The trouble is you don’t where that somewhere else is.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Keep It Simple: Design

“The Bulletin” has been re-designed. As part of a stable that boasts the Catalan daily “dBalears”, which won an award for its makeover, the result of this re-design should be positive.

The “dBalears” revamp was contemporary in one very strong regard. Its look owed and owes much to internet presentation. It is perhaps an irony of digital competition that the print media should ape this competition, though it is not a surprise. Good layout on a screen demands clean lines and appearance; the same principle applies to whatever format.

There is, however, design and there is design. No, make that that there is design, design and design. Design that is simply no good, that which is good, and that which is good but completely misses the point.

I was in a bar the other day (the Jolly Roger). There was a poster on one of the wooden posts. I looked at it and I continued to look at it. I had to go back and look again. Finally, someone (Grizz) came in and without asking pointed at something on the poster and announced that a complaint should be made. There it was. What I had been unable to see. The date.

If you are going to have a poster for an event, in this case a horse spectacular in Alcúdia, one fairly basic requirement is that you clearly communicate when it’s taking place. This poster does nothing of the sort. The reason for my being unable to locate the date was how it had been designed.

The problem with the design was that the date was not only to the left, it was also vertical. Its positioning and style broke two fundamental rules. One is that the eye tracks to the right, unless you’re an Arabic reader and the eye goes the other way, in which case you will have just read “daer tsuj evah …”. While the main visual look of the poster, that of a horse, strangely enough, grabs the attention, it is the information that needs to be communicated which is as important, and being informed as to when the show is happening is far from unimportant.

Just as the eye tracks to the right and not to the left, so it also, or rather the brain, needs to adjust to a vertical visual and more specifically text that runs vertically. It’s why I couldn’t see it, even though it was literally staring me in the face.

There is nothing wrong with breaking rules, but design which may be good (and to be honest the overall poster design isn’t that good) has to keep to the point. Which is to communicate.

In Mallorca, there are an awful lot of designers. It seems, at times, as though whole school years leave education armed with a design qualification. There are hordes of them, armed with Photoshop and Illustrator and with innovation firmly in mind. This has spawned some remarkably good graphic work. The standards of Mallorcan design are high, owing at least something to an artistic heritage on the island.

However, the craving for innovativeness can get in the way of the message. Similarly, a lack of appreciation as to audience can also obscure what it is that is meant to be conveyed. I’ll give you an example.

A few years ago, the Pollensa autumn fair had a visual that was meant to be some sort of agricultural tool. You could have fooled me. It looked more like a sex aid. I was completely baffled by it. While it may have meant something to the local Mallorcan population, it meant nothing to anyone else. Too much promotional material suffers from a failure to communicate in different languages, but when the visual imagery misses the point of its audience, or potential audience, then any innovation becomes pointless.

Simple really is often the best. Take design for restaurant adverts. Tedious may be the almost default style of advert which shows a terrace or an interior, but it is actually important. It was a message that came over when someone was analysing different designs as a tourist. Those with shots of what the place looked like were more meaningful than something more arty that didn’t. The message was very powerful, because the very audience the adverts were being intended for was being influenced by one of the most powerful things a restaurant has to sell – its look.

And look is everything. Adverts, brochures, newspapers. And simple is also very often everything.

N.B. The re-design of “The Bulletin” is from Saturday, 30 April. This article, forwarded as usual for reproduction in the paper, would appear to have been vetoed on the grounds that the design team responsible for the re-design might be a bit “touchy”. Can anyone explain why? Given that this article had been knocked out earlier than would normally be the case, as with a now alternative, in order to help them out for their grand re-launch (at a time when I don’t have a lot of spare time), I feel I have every right to be a tad pissed off. Perhaps sensibilities towards contributors and remuneration might be as strong as that afforded to a bunch of designers.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Posters

Posters, posters. Today I am poster boy. Or rather, yesterday I was. Posters for this. Posters for that. Some arty, most not. The Beata poster looks like art but without close inspection is just a mess and mass of reds and browns. Ignore it. Most people probably do, unless they’re Mallorcan. Thousands of people lined the streets of Santa Margalida on Sunday – it says in the reports – but it is unlikely that they needed a brown and red poster to attract them; they knew of the event in any event. The poster for the Alcúdia Ye-Ye, now also a thing of the past. What is “ye-ye” exactly. She loves you, ye, ye, ye perhaps. Or oh ye of so little faith, if you have no time for the religious outpouring of Beata. Beata or Beatles. Who went to the Ye-Ye unless they were alcudienc? Who knew about it? They may have seen the poster but it didn’t register. Steve from Little Britain passed me. There’s that poster in the shop. A policeman dropped one by, just left it, without so much as a by-your-leave, a hello or a goodbye. Yea, yea, ye, ye, it’s a poster, the one about the illegal street selling. It’s in Castilian as well as Catalan. No sign on the sign of English or German. Who will register it among the tourism throngs? It’s just window-dressing, thinks I. It shows that they’re doing something, something being a poster. It is window-dressing because it’s in the window of the shop. From the boot of the car I take the Ye-Ye poster and the Mercadets d’Estiu poster. The town hall had given them to me. What was I to do with them? They’ll just end up in the blue paper recycling container. What would anyone do with them, unless they are Mallorcan? What is a mercadet d’estiu to a tribe of tourists from Tottenham or Thüringen? It is in fact a small summer market, the pictures just about give it away. But who would know what “jocs” are? A load of Scots spelt incorrectly? 

 

Why do they do all this? Well, the answer is obvious. But where is the publicity aimed at everyone else, all those tourists? Does anyone actually stop and think? And then there is a poster for 10 September. What day is that? It’s the Alcúdia day of the tourist, the climax to it being an appropriate gathering of the poor man’s tourism experience – tribute acts, a Queen and a Jackson, but no Beatles: ye, ye, ye; no, no, no. Why must there be a day of the tourist? Is every day not a day of the tourist? But at least it’s in English – after a fashion. “We wait 4 U,” it says. SMS posters. Someone thought: let’s be contemporary, funky, in touch with the tourist inner youth and texter. But wait – what is this “wait”? What does it mean? It’s that verb. “Esperar”. It translates in different ways – wait for, expect, hope. We expect you. That’s a command. You don’t command tourists to do anything. We hope (you will come). If you hope, you don’t expect, except that expect can imply different expectations; it is not only a command. We wait for you, therefore. How long? Does nothing happen until the tourists turn up, the ones they hope for or expect? Does anyone actually stop and think what they’re saying on these posters, even when they do them in English. Even if it were the right word, the grammar’s wrong. 

 

Posters, posters. Thousands of euros. Thousands of sheets of paper. Printers in business. Designers in business. And probably some useless translator in business, too. And much of it a total waste of effort.