Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media. » Shepard Fairey

Obamacize it: Online Shepard Fairey icon generator

Paul Schmelzer — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:36:24 +0000

Making the cover of TIME wasn’t the peak of Shepard Fairey’s successes this election season: his iconic Obama poster was purchased by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery for an undisclosed sum, and a reworking of the red, white and blue classic is being given away to donors to the historic inauguration. But for those of us who don’t have Fairey’s vision or twenty bucks to spare, there’s Obamiconme.com, a site by Paste magazine that lets users make their own Obamicized versions. We tried out Al Franken and Norm Coleman (swap headers depending on your political preference or predictions of the Senate race outcome) and, after the jump, a bit of advice for Rep. Michele Bachmann next time she’s on “Hardball” paired with her Sixth Congressional District challenger: THINK and TINK.

Want to submit your version for possible publication? Email me at pschmelzer [at] minnesotaindependent [dot] com.

Where’s the GOP street art?

Paul Schmelzer — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:36:18 +0000

A lot has been written about street artists promoting the candidacy of Barack Obama, but how about the GOP side? A search at Flickr shows only a few photos of street art that could be construed, in a pinch, as supporting the Republican ticket (John McCain as Billy Elliot, a fuzzy [if endangered] polar bear with a McCain/Palin sign, a “John McCain for Grandpa” sticker) or opposing Obama (a Nobama stencil, graffiti on a train that reads “No affirmative action president“). There’s little ambiguity, though, in street-art depictions of Sarah Palin, which tend to show the VP candidate with devil horns. One new project shows a “truly frightening” rendering of Palin that cops Shepard Fairey’s iconic designs for Obama posters.

Design of the times: Obama ‘Hope’ poster gets a life of its own

Molly Priesmeyer — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:41:49 +0000

While there are plenty of memorable images in this presidential campaign that are still jockeying to be the Most Significant, a design by artist Shepard Fairey has, quite literally, changed the face of presidential campaigns. His now-famous “Hope” and “Progress” images designed for Barack Obama helped bring art and design culture into campaign marketing. After all, in what other election has a candidate had a custom logo absent of his or her name, let alone one so ubiquitous?

Like Obama’s logo, which supporters can download to create their very own avatar, Fairey’s posters have taken on a life of their own, albeit a bit more organically. People are using the design to create all kinds of political and sometimes intentionally illogical images and messages, from the Pope to Bob Hope to McCain as a Dope to Sarah Palin as Nope and, um, to the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. (Oddly, there is no “Soap” yet.)

Blogger Rene Wanner has been collecting all of them, from the intriguing to the totally offensive and racist. They’re like little snapshots of both a utopian and dystopian America, one where an African-American can be a leader imparting hope and another where he can be the target of racism and fear. The site also shows how the image has taken a new pop-culture form, used as the template for all sorts of messages hard to decode.

Obama continues to connect with creatives

Paul Schmelzer — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:42:19 +0000

Whether through calculated efforts by his campaign or grassroots channels (like NotCot.org’s user-submitted entry system), Barack Obama seems to be the biggest beneficiary of the work of street artists, programmers and graphic designers: following Shepard Fairey’s Obama posters, new pieces have come out by Munk One, Date Farmers and Sam Flores. For artists, the project can generate funds for the candidate they support — like Fairey, the three artists listed above auctioned off prints to support Obama’s campaign — while raising awareness about their work. Obama, in this case, gets a credibility boost by having influential artists who are known mainly to an insider community give their stamp of approval.

Other efforts for candidates are yielding more mixed results: Obama and Clinton finger puppets (cue “sock puppet” trolls), a hip-hop ode to Hillary (most cringeworthy line: “say, little sweetie, gonna write it in graffiti: Vote for Hill-a-ree”) and an Obama logo generator that lets users do their own artful hacks/tributes on the O-rising-over-field/flag icon (oddly, against the spirit of such social-media projects, the user-created logos that are catalogued on Flickr, like the one above, are copyrighted with an “all rights reserved” notice).

The election goes lowbrow and underground

Molly Priesmeyer — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:47:37 +0000

A couple months ago, street artist/designer Shepard Fairey debuted his limited-edition Barack Obama prints on his Web site. Like everything else Fairey has done (including honest-to-goodness marketing campaigns for corporate giants Pepsi and such) the series of Obama posters took inspiration from Fairey’s “Andre the Giant”/”Obey” anti-campaign he’s famous for: shadowy, graphic, three-tone images that have influenced every darn last guerrilla marketing effort for more than a decade.

Now it seems Fairey’s pro-Obama art has created a new movement. This week, the Obama campaign announced it will be selling donated Obama-themed artwork at “Artists for Obama.” Currently, the only artwork available there is Fairey’s “Change” poster for $70, even though eBay sellers are listing some Fairey posters for more than $2,000.

And while Fairey’s street-art images are popping up in cities everywhere, they’ve also inspired other artists to start some guerrilla marketing of their own. This Obama street-art group on Flickr lists more than 65 images of unique Obama artworks spotted on sidewalks, garbage cans, building sides, street signs and more in nearly every city. That leads us to this question: The Flickr site: Viral marketing of its own, or simply a documentation of a movement? You decide.