Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles has a prominent billboard on its face that looks out over the hustle and bustle of South Broadway, coveted real estate in a neighborhood in the midst of resurgence. While it would be easy to rent this prime space to the highest bidder, this approach felt like a wasted opportunity to Ace, a company interested in community and sharing. With this billboard literally attached to its property, Ace thought it should reflect those beliefs.

Ace partnered with WeTransfer for the project, an organization whose mutual interest in sharing is as strong as one might expect from a company whose raison d'être is creating new online sharing solutions. What they came up with was Dear DTLA.

From June 2015 to February 2016, the companies are handing over the billboard each month to different artists and allowing them to deliver their own messages to the people of Downtown L.A. The lineup they've put together represents some of the more noteworthy artists and designers working today. As of this writing, they've shared work by Brian Roettinger, whose design work has graced album covers by St. Vincent, Mark Ronson, and Jay Z; Mariana Fernandes, whose work solo and with Fabrica Design Studio pushes the boundaries between graphic design, illustration, fine art, and web art, among other media; and Robert Montgomery, whose history of working with billboards and public installations in what he calls a "poetic and melancholic post-situationist tradition" makes him an obvious match for the project. 

Digital extras related to each piece are also being made available for free download on the Dear DTLA website. This additional element has proven an ideal way to share Dear DTLA with people who can't make it to the neighborhood, while also driving traffic in WeTransfer's direction.


The positive response from the neighborhood and the larger art world for Dear DTLA has been gratifying for both Ace Hotel and WeTransfer. More importantly, Dear DTLA has provided a new venue to explore work that they believe in, sharing it with the community in an innovative way.
