Multimodal Essay

Artwork on Buses in Pittsburgh

Artwork can be found all throughout the city of Pittsburgh hidden in doorways, displayed on the ground, in windows, or any space made available. A major problem with these forms of artwork is that they are physically static making them seen only by a small niche of people either going out and looking for them or by people passing by who happen to take notice. With the use of the new medium of buses, artwork can be seen by the masses with its outwardly bold displays and constant motion.
Demanding attention through their massive physical state, buses are not something that go unnoticed by the people of Pittsburgh who walk past them on the sidewalks. Glancing at the buses that pass by in a blur, one may notice many different kinds of artwork displayed on the exterior. On every bus in Pittsburgh there is a design of some sort trying to grab the attention of the audience. The buses display text, pictures, and a combination of both. Both the text and pictures serve very functional purposes, which is that predominantly of advertisement. Written in varying languages, the text on many of the buses is repetitive, multicolored, and a large enough font to be seen from a distance. The text uses the whole side of the bus as its canvas rather than sectioning off a rectangle of space, such as traditional advertisements do.
Port Authority, the company in charge of the mass transit of the city, has different sized displays advertisers can chose from to display their artwork. The options range from “the full wrap”, which literally wraps the artwork around the bus without regards to a rectangular shape, to a small rectangular space called “the tail-light” which displays the artwork on the back of the bus making it visible to those behind.
Artwork on buses has been seen in our cultural past for almost fifty years. One of the first groups to gain recognition for their bus art was Ken Kesey and his band on Merry Pranksters, who decorated a school bus, the Furthur, with psychedelic art making bold vibrant statements as they drove cross country. The ideology of bus art has changed little since then demanding viewers to take notice to the artwork.
The artwork on the buses contains both text and pictures. Some examples are the repeated words “Port Authority” or an advertisement for the local Pittsburgh Zoo. The artwork is usually specific to the different parts of the city that the buses pass through, so as to make a connection between the bus route and nearby attractions. Functional and purposeful, the artwork is mostly displayed in the form of an advertisement. Some of the buses however only contain abstract designs and patterns, serving no other purpose then as to be aesthetically pleasing. The buses are painted in unnatural colors not commonly found in the Pittsburgh landscape so as to stand out. Demanding attention and constantly on the move, bus artwork in Pittsburgh is a rising form of art that is continually able to reach the masses through its use of the mass transit system.