Look closely at the side of one of the many former warehouse buildings in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward and you might spot the remnants of what was once a hand-painted advertisement. Last year, these so-called ghost signs captured the fascination of
Mike Roe, executive creative director at Milwaukee-based advertising agency
Hoffman York, who would look at one day after day on his way in and out of the firm’s Third Ward office. He would try hard to imagine what the sign looked like in its heyday: “I was just getting nowhere, it was frustrating. And that’s when I thought it would be really interesting … if we could find out what those ghost signs used to look like and recreate them with augmented reality,” said Roe. It was from his curiosity that the Augmented History mobile experience was born, giving users a “window to the past” through their smart device.
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Research: Roe scoured the archives at the Milwaukee County Historical Society, Milwaukee Public Library and Wisconsin Historical Society for vintage photographs of the Third Ward, dating back to the early 1900s. It often required looking closely at the background of an image to catch a glimpse of a now-faded ghost sign in its original form.
[caption id="attachment_592424" align="aligncenter" width="768"]
This historical photo shows an advertisement for Blatz painted on the side of a building in the Third Ward.[/caption]
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Recreate: Referencing hundreds of historic images, Hoffman York designers worked to recreate the art by hand or using computer software. They went through several iterations of design tweaks, such as distorting the typeface and texture grafting, to make the digitally rendered signage look more realistic and less like a simulation.
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Build: It turned out that the buildings were too large for traditional augmented reality. Hoffman York senior software developer Rich Laiacona worked out a solution in Adobe Aero, using inputs from Google Earth to create a 3D map of the Third Ward and then using geolocation data to anchor the recreated ghost signs to their respective buildings.
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Add: The team created 3D historical markers that appear to sit on the sidewalk in front of each ghost sign, so when a user holds up their smart device, they’re “not only seeing what the sign used to look like, (they) can actually read a little bit about the back story of that sign,” said Roe.
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Launch: Hoffman York partnered with the Historic Third Ward Association to publicly launch its Augmented History project in May as a walking tour, featuring 14 ghost signs on nine different buildings in the Third Ward.
