Faded signs are today's loss

The visual environment belongs to us all and yet we live in an era in which every eyesore is justified by functionality and economic interest. Everywhere there are over-large, garish adverts designed to stand out in the most offensively discordant way. It takes a few brave obsessives to point out to us how advertising used to be and could still be: part of the local environment rather than apart from it.

Fading signs on village and town walls remind us private businesses do not have to sacrifice beauty and harmony to make sales. Old adverts were made to fit neatly with the architecture and their virtues need to be re-nurtured by a throwaway society that regards the hideous as an inevitable sign of economic prosperity.