Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
"Mind your step" - stairs as an advertising medium
acoustic and museological functions. The building, which covers a ground area of nearly twenty thousand square metres, boasts the huge common lobby as its most grandiose space serving as a worthy reception area and an orientation platform for the visitors arriving. Connection between the various levels is established by the elegant stairs, escalators and lifts creating a unique spatial effect. "Mind your step" — stairs as an advertising medium "Mind your step.” This common wisdom lies at the heart of the commercial strategies employed by advertisement experts who developed the technique of using the stairs in the 2nd and 3rd metro lines as their principal advertising medium. The commercial messages stuck to the front of the stairway steps going down to subways demand extreme concision of representation. The combined surfaces capable of carrying advertisements amount to 358 square metres along line 2 and 680 on line 3. Turning to this new type of advertising surface was more than a random idea; it was a deliberate strategic move based on the careful analysis of relevant statistics ■ It carried commerciati, too 78
