Structural Patterns

Once again, I was fortunate to be commissioned to create the spring 2025 “Philosophy Works” MTA advertisement campaign for The School of Practical Philosophy & Meditation. The idea that came to mind revolved around achieving lightness of being. Visually, I thought about New Yorkers floating above the skyscrapers, and madness that is New York City. I assembled a simple mockup, below.

The idea was approved, however, a central and grounding figure was necessary. So I placed a person in stride walking directly to the viewer. The turn around time was tight and as the School had previously requested the paper cut out generative AI, I once again turned to generative AI to help create the assets for the design. I fed the individual photographs of floating or jumping people into the AI with the setting for digital illustration. I then assembled the final composition from the various assets – people and skyline. The subway platform is immediately below and then the subway car version.

As you can see, I made sure to include iconic Manhattan buildings, new and old – the Woolworth Building to the left, One World Trade Center and the Herzog de Meuron “Jenga Tower”

The main critique from the School is that the central figure looks too much like Tom Brady. However, the posters have been graffitied with “USE HUMANS NOT AI.” The next iteration should return to hand-drawn digital illustration! Oddly, although the School paid the usual cost for MTA poster distribution across platform and subway cars, I’ve only seen it on the platforms. I’ve yet to see the in-car version below.

We kept the catch phrase from the previous campaign, they didn’t go for my listing of philosophers and the allusion to the 1987 “Calgon, take me away!” TV campaign.