When big cars make our cities smaller

Have you noticed how cars get bigger every year? Does it feel like our streets are getting smaller? This phenomenon is known as 'Carspreading'

In collaboration with Serious People and Clean Cities, we helped introduce the term into the lexicon with a distinctive visual identity inspired by vintage car manuals and common sense.

Common sense and safety

The world of automotive transport offers a rich history of design, from vintage Haynes manuals to iconic car advertising, to the visual language of our streets and highways.

We drew on these visual cues to create an iconic advertising campaign that makes you look twice. Carspreading is an issue that most people understand, and policies like extra taxes and parking charges for larger vehicles are broadly popular, even with those who own SUVs themselves.

A cross-country road trip

Starting in London the campaign has rolled through Cardiff and Edinburgh, appearing Out of Home and online, with a crowdsourced digital campaign allowing people to show their own examples of egregious Carspreading.

Since the start of the campaign, policies to tackle Carspreading are making headway, with Cardiff becoming the fist city to introduce higher parking charges for heavier and larger vehicles, while many other councils are considering similar moves.