I created yet one more pack of free posters as a creative alternative to the existing posters. This set comes with a version at 8.5 x 11 so it is even more ‘at home’ printer friendly. It is also available in both 11×17 and 24×36. In all honesty these were created because I was experimenting with a new style of vector illustration and a poster came out of that experimentation. I thought I might as well offer it up to anyone who might like to use it to promote Obama. I created this at the same time as the commemoritive poster but decided to go with the look and feel for the commemoritive poster versus this style. It’s a bit more of a characatur than previous images. The image does translate well from a distance though.
As always you can download all of the files in the Obama section and use at your discression (so long as you do not intend to sell them).
I am in the process of gathering price quotes for the printing of the large scale commemoritive poster, so it should be available for sale within the next 3 weeks.
I decided just before Obama won the nomination for the Democratic party that I wanted to do a commemorative poster for him. I felt like what has been missing lately with a lot of the work that has been done out there for him is something a little more ageless and less trendy. I thought a lot of older voters would appreciate having something they could hang on their wall as well. So I set out to try and create something that would bridge that divide a little bit and appeal to both young and old. I wanted the image to almost appear as a giant commemorative stamp. At least that was how I saw it in my head. I realized that his logo worked with the same composition as I had done earlier for the poster I created commemorating Buckminster Fuller. So, I decided to stick with that design and potentially do a series of these.
I will be printing this poster sometime in the next few weeks before the DNC and it will be available for purchase in my Merchline Storefront when it is off the press. Once the cost of production is paid for through the sales, whatever profit is accrued by the posters will be donated directly to Obama’s campaign. The poster is very large measuring in at 24 by 36 inches (2 feet by 3 feet). It just about destroyed my computer as the actual 300 dpi Photoshop file was nearing 3 gigs. I have been whittling away at it for about 2 weeks off an on now and I am finally satisfied with the result. The poster will be printed on crisp white 100lb stock paper to preserve the highlight effect on Obama’s face. I also used the official Obama typeface as well since it has become such a known part of his propaganda, and I felt it was important to make sure that was in this poster.
I will write another entry announcing when the poster will be available for sale. Stay tuned. As always you can see the poster along with a closer detail in the PRINT section with the rest of my print work.
I haven’t yet posted news about Upper Playground’s ongoing Obama poster series because of mixed emotions. I haven’t been able yet to determine if all the money they are making is going toward the Obama campaign or not. In times like these, I say give if you can and if you are earning money from Obama’s image, give that money back to his campaign. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great the Upperplayground is contributing. I just think it’s a little immoral to be turning a buck of the Obama trend on one hand and touting support with the other. This is America though and that is how capitalism works I guess. Like I said though, I could be totally wrong, they might be giving a small amount of money to the artist and then giving all the rest back to the campaign. With each poster costing a whopping $200 in this economy, with a target audience that is most likely comprised of artists and creatives, I hope they are putting that money towards a good cause. If they are, then I applaud them whole-heartedly and apologize sincerely for any misperception on my behalf.
That peace being spoken, the poster by Ron English really is noteworthy. Not just because Ron English is such an interesting and controversial artist but because of his interpretation of Obama in his poster. It stirs a lot of emotions looking at the image he has created and it also brings about an idea of a circle in history finally being closed once and for all. I think it’s a brilliant idea and speaks a lot about the intelligence behind English’s work. Of all the posters so far, I would say this one, if you have the actual money to spare, is worth the cost. It’s a brilliant effort by English and beautifully conceived. In a world of clutter it is so often the simplest images that speak the loudest.
Hilary Clinton has officially announced tonight that she is officially dropping out of the race for President. She has plans now to endorse Obama later this week.
That being said it is time for the next important order of business and that is the news that for the first time in the history of the United States of America we officially have are first black presidential nominee. It is a proud and historic moment for our country and it is a moment that so far has been hard fought by Obama and his supporters. I think at this point it is safe to say that he has run an intelligent campaign and his people have done an absolutely phenomenal job in winning this nomination. It really is an amazing time right now in the United States and it is exciting as a young person to feel, even in a small way to be actively participating in something so important. It’s an amazing moment to see someone young, energized, exciting and more symbolic of our shared creeds in this country.
The real work lies ahead now for the Obama camp. McCain will be pulling out all the stops to do whatever he can to smear and bring Obama down. It is going to be a tough time but what could potentially be gained is worth the fight. It is a thrilling time for sure and I think a lot of eyes, all over the world will continue to be focused on where this is all going. There is no doubt that America now finds itself in the throes of political history. I just hope for all our sakes that this is the beginning of correcting some awful mistakes made over the last 8 years. We have a lot of work to do and we need to get to it.
I have been holding off on writing this entry until the video was in from all three remaining presidential candidates tonight. I watched all three and there were some good speeches given tonight. They are posted above and I apologize for the commercials but it was the best and most complete video I could find. I think the speeches tonight were the first time the American public got a glimpse of some of what they can expect in the coming months. I am probably misquoting the exact number, but McCain used the word ‘change’ around 35 times or more in his speech. A particular note that offended me from McCain’s speech was his touting that Obama somehow represents or is supported by special interest. That was hard to sit through considering McCain is supported by some of the most powerful corporate lobbyists in the country. His attempt at posing himself as the original change candidate seemed a little contrived and a touch desperate but I think it is just the beginning of his part pulling out all the stops against a potential run against Obama. I have heard from inside his party that the proposition of running against Obama and his ‘new’ way of campaigning scares the hell out of some of his affiliates. Apparently Obama has been able to move younger conservative voters over to his side and this worries McCain’s organizers. It should and it is also why I think we can expect to see a very interesting race that will highlight some of the polar factions of American politics.
Another note from the nights events is that Clinton made it clear that she is not yet deciding to drop out of the nomination process. She has amassed a large cache of voters, and as a wealthy woman, there can be no doubt that she knows when you have acquired valuable assets you hold on to them as long as you can or at least as long as you can to use them for leverage. That being said, it is looking like she wants to use that cache of voters as a potential way of maneuvering her way into a V.P. position. News is breaking from her camp that she wants to seek personal council with Obama as soon as possible so they can discuss future plans. The nagging question is, why doesn’t she just meet with him then? Why does she have to ‘announce’ that she wants to meet with him. One thing is for sure, the Clinton supporters are standing firmly by her and regardless of her attempt at congratulating Obama and speaking of party unification.
Lastly, and of course I can admit bias as an Obama supporter, I think Obama gave a rousing speech tonight. It was truly inspiring and it was the first time I felt he really started laying down the issues he wants to address as the nominee. The news has been quick to jump on the story of his nomination and I was very excited by it myself. The problem is, Clinton has not yet officially ceded the nomination and until she does I worry that she could cause a tear in the party. Obama is doing his best despite this to talk to all potential voters on both sides of the aisle. Despite the muddy conditions under which he did his best at accepting the apparent nomination, it is a historic evening for American politics. Obama will be our first black presidential nominee and it is due time. I still believe he is a real symbol for a new America and it is an America that young people understand and openly accept while some older Americans are still clinging to past prejudice. I have heard it said and uttered that America is not ready for a black President and I feel this is totally untrue. If we are not ready now then we never will be. Skin color should no longer be an issue in this country. Period. It’s an important and overdue step for the U.S.
I know some readers do not like it when I write about politics but as an American citizen this presidential race and it’s impact on both the U.S. and the world are impossible to ignore. The current administration has put a strain on this country and it has made it a difficult climate in which to practice a creative career. It will be better for us all if America takes a step in a more intelligent, diplomatic, ethical and prosperous direction. These are interesting times we find ourselves in and I think it’s important to pay attention. The world could be a very different place in the future and making changes may require sacrifices from us all, specifically in the U.S. We need a leader now more than ever that can inspire us to take up our civic duty and make both America and the world a better place. We have been apathetic for too long and it is costing us dearly.
The official national Obama for President campaign has asked enormously popular graphic artist Scott Hansen A.K.A. ISO50 to design the next poster for the Artists for Obama program. The last poster was designed by Shepard Fairey and has already sold out long ago. There will be 5,000 posters printed at $70 a piece. It should hopefully help raise a nice little chunk of change for Obama. I think this is a brilliant idea on Obama’s behalf and it shows how in touch and intelligent his organizers really are.
Hansen has written on his blog that the poster was one of the largest files he has ever produced. The final Photoshop layered file weighed in at 2.77 gigabytes and nearly a thousand layers. That’s pretty mind boggling if you ask me. I think the biggest Photoshop file I ever produced was close to 2 gigs but I have never gone over that.
It’s great to see that he was so inspired to create something so spectacular on Obama’s behalf. I am excited to see it and I am also very happy to see the money will be going where it should, into the hands of the campaign where it can be used to help Obama gain the nomination this summer.
The poster should be available at Obama’s online store sometime later this week or next. It may also be available at ISO50. I will post more when the news breaks.
I have created one last round of free downloadable vector-format posters for the Obama presidential campaign. I created these myself because of some of the recent problems and allegations that have been swarming around Obama. I still feel very strongly that he is the most viable candidate for president in 2008. It has angered me to see him being accused of being an elitist. Barack Obama is a self-made man of the people and he is very much for the people.
Again, these posters are completely free and were created deliberately as vector art so they would be small in file size making them ideal for fast distribution through email. They are available in both 11 x 17 format and large scale poster size at 24 x 36. The 11 x 17 posters are ideal for home printing on tabloid size paper and should be fairly inexpensive to print in large quantities. The small file size should allow you to email them directly to Kinko’s if you would like to print a run for your local Obama campaign group.
I created this new series to be much more aggressive in tone and convey more of Obama’s strength and determination. The last series was meant to help communicate Obama’s humanity and his qualities as the ‘thinking-man’s candidate’ which I feel he is.
Once more, if you do not like the style of these posters or feel they can be improved or translated into your native language, I encourage you to download them and do so. I have made the raw Illustrator files completely available so you are welcome to alter them in any way you see fit. The previous post announcing the alterations of the already existing posters also contains a long list of other places on the web where you can download Obama posters. Those posters and mine should give you several options suiting many tastes for posters to distribute at little to no cost.
I decided to make some alterations to the first round of Obama posters. I realized that the Obama ‘O’ was decreasing the legibility of the posters so I changed it using it more as an ‘O’ and less as a symbol. If you plan on using them for the upcoming super Tuesday then please redownload the posters. They have all been updated. Just trying to get everything ready for this Tuesday. It’s an important day for Obama.
Again, if you don’t like the posters, you are free to download and alter them however you would like as the raw Illustrator files are available to do so. If you don’t even want to do that but want to support Obama, I encourage you to make your own materials and distribute them on your website. Or, if you would like, you are welcome to email them to me along with your email and website and I will upload them to my website where people can download them.
So, with all of those and mine there should be a little something there to suit everyone’s taste. Consider yourself prepared. I am going to leave the buttons for now since something like 5,000 or more of them have been made already. I may change them this week, I will notify you if I do. I have just worked so hard on all of these, it has really eaten into my time at home with my family. I consider it a small price to pay though if it helps raise awareness of Obama.
I have decided to produce more posters for the Obama campaign. It is the least I can do to help provide more resources for fellow supporters. This time I would like to produce posters as per some of your requests. Please tell me if there is anything missing that would be helpful. Leave me comments or email me via the contact section and let me know what you would like the posters to say, in English or any other language. Obama needs support more now than ever and I want to do all I can to help provide materials for his campaign. Please let me know what you want them to say and what sizes you want me to produce them in. I will do a few more image-based posters and several more type and message based posters. I will start later this week and try to have some new posters later next week or the following.
Please do leave a comment and tell me what you think is needed or what you are your campaign organizer need specifically. There has been a lack of comments on my blog so far and it kind of bugs me. I really need your input and feedback on this one.
You may have heard this in the news today because it is the latest piece of garbage that the media has sent up the flagpole and just as you would expect they are all now standing erect at full salute like a bunch of mindless zombies. The bullshit to which I am referring to, is the ‘guns and religion’ comment Obama made last week. The problem with the whole thing is that the ‘people cling to guns and religion’ comment came out of a much longer talk where there was a massive amount of, can you handle this, truth! He was speaking about how when times are hard and people feel more and more misrepresented by, and disconnected from their government, which I think we can safely say most of us feel right now, they become angry, cling to their remaining rights and look to faith where they hope for the best. You can read his actual comments above.
As I think you will find, in his own words, there is a lot of truth to what Obama is saying. I just wish they would broadcast all of his talk on television so people can hear and see exactly what was said. I agree completely with what he said. Yes, he could have worded it a little more subtly, but c’mon, things are bad right now and are we so sensitive that we can’t take a hard look at ourselves and engage in truthful dialogue? Does everything have to be pureed into baby food so we can lap it up from our politicians like abunch of helpless dogs? Seriously folks, can’t we cut the bullshit here and start talking about the gigantic steps we have to take now to get ourselves out of this massive shit-heap that has been piled upon us by the most irresponsible administration in the history of the United States? Are we so sensitive that we can’t talk honestly about how embittered we really are? Don’t we have a right to be, and is it really going to offend our sensibilities so badly to hear one of our politicians muse on the subject? Obama is thinking about the American people and what our mindset is because he wants to represent us. He may have stumbled on his verbage a little, but how many times has Bush said something so stupid that you just about had to turn off the television and take a shower because you were covered in disgust.
Don’t let our media fool you right now. This is a game and what is at stake is MONEY. Money, money, money. There are a lot of wealthy people who do not want to see a politician step forward with the best interest of the American people in his heart. To allow this would be to overturn all the progress they have made at subduing us and turning us into their own personal ATM withdrawal. Don’t be fooled for a minute because it is just bullshit. Plain and simple. There is no other word to describe it and it makes me mad. They are reaching for anything they can find right now to bring Obama down and it is transparent and sad.
The truth is, that the very people Obama is referring to and will be the most offended by his comments are the same people who voted for Bush twice in the last 8 years. Even more ironic is the sheer and simple fact that Bush has been running those people into the ground at every turn. He has sent their sons and daughters to war with no good explanation as to why. He has refused them proper health and psychiatric care upon their return. He has taken their jobs and made it impossible for them to keep their homes. Make no bones about it and clear the wax from your ears. His administration is responsible for where we are now and it is going to take someone other than another Clinton or pro-war Republican to get us out of this mess.
I would like to see Clinton answer, honestly, exactly how much money she has accepted from pharmaceutical lobbyists. She wanted to change the health care system many years ago and she was run into the ground and now she has been bought out by the corrupting powers she tried to fight. It is a sacrifice of integrity that we can no longer allow at the highest levels of our government. I would also like to see McCain speak about how many handouts he has taken from corporate lobbyists. Only in a country this divided could someone who just filed a tax return for over a hundred million dollars refer to Obama as ‘elitist’. It’s outrageous and enigmatic of the kind of smear politics that have corrupted the integrity of our system. Don’t be fooled by it and don’t grace it with a moment of your consideration. It’s not worth it and it’s flat out wrong. We have been swindled and we will only have ourselves to blame if we let it happen again, be it by our irresponsible media or money-grubbing politicians.
If you missed it, in rebuttal to a lot of the slander that has been happening lately in the midst of his campaign, Obama composed an eloquent speech on the touchy subject of race and politics. It’s 2008 people. Seriously, lets get with it for once. What really matters anymore? Does race matter more or the shameless corruption of our entire system for the benefit of a select group of profiteers who want nothing more than to subjugate the world so they can get rich? We are at a crossroads here and it is time we pull ourselves up, collectively and take back ownership of our nation. What kind of country are we making this for our children? I am talking to the twenty and thirty somethings out there. Whether you have children or not, one day we will hand this country over to the next generation. They are already out there. How will we answer when they ask us why we made the choices we did? People around the world are watching us closely to see what we choose now. It is of the utmost importance. It may be one of the most important moments in our history that we will ever experience. We must, for the benefit of the entire world, wrestle this country back from the shameful and greedy men that have used it as their own personal financial coffer. We have been asleep at the wheel and taken advantage of. It is time to give someone new a chance. Get involved now. You will not get a second chance this time to care. Care now. Speak out. Force change. This is our country and it is our future. We are the people we have been waiting for.
Barack Obama had some choice words today in response to Hillary Clinton’s recent comments that she believes that if she were elected, Obama would make a strong candidate for Vice President. Obama didn’t miss a beat on that one.
I was asked by the Obama Headquarters in Chicago to take the posters I had created and convert some of them into buttons to extend their use to promote his campaign for president. I was also asked to generate some new messaging for Mothers for Obama, Educators for Obama and Women for Obama. So, I crafted some new buttons specifically for those messages. The buttons are large in scale at 2.25 inches. As with the posters, the buttons are now available for free download at the Obama Section of the site in PDF, EPS and Adobe Illustrator file formats.
I was asked by the local Colorado chapter of the Obama For America Campaign to create a poster.
So, I decided to create not just one poster, but a series of posters that would be easy to distribute to all who were interested in spreading Barack Obama’s message and help get him elected President in 2008. As you can see in the button tabs on the site, there is now an ‘OBAMA’ tab where you can download the posters for free in your choice of either PDF, Illustrator or EPS file formats. The posters are free and intended for mass distribution. There are two series of posters. The first are in a large-scale 24×36 format and are intended for promotional purposes only. The second series is available in a smaller 11×17 format and has white space intended for writing any additional messages that might be needed such as a meeting time, directions, etc. Please use the posters only for positive purposes and to help spread Obama’s message.
Whether you support Obama or not, please get out there and vote in the next election. We get the government we deserve in this country and after 8 years of a corrupt and tyrannical administration, I think we deserve better. You have heard it before, but it bears repeating, YOUR VOTE COUNTS.
I have some great news that I can hardly keep to myself. A friend recruited me to help make posters for Barack Obama’s Colorado campaign yesterday. I will be starting work on them this week. I was so exited to be contributing, even in a small way like designing posters, that I could barely contain myself. I was even told to just ‘do what I do’ and make them art. I can barely wait to get started. I’ll post images in the ‘work’ section and on the blog when I am finished.
A group of celebrities and musicians gathered to create this inspiring little diddy about Barack Obama. It is nice to see him gathering some steam. I sure would rather it be him than Hilary come nomination time.And yes, I did cast my vote for him at the caucus.
Shepard Fairey has thrown his hat in the ring to endorse Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. He will be selling a poster this Wednesday, January 30th with proceeds going towards posters for a large statewide campaign promoting Obama and his message. If you would like to help with the campaign, email info@obeygiant.com with OBAMA as the subject line to receive further instructions on what you can do to help. Lets hope it helps add more momentum to Obama’s campaign because I too believe he is a candidate who shows real promise and a push towards a positive change for our bruised and battered country. It is time for a real change in this country and I think people can feel it.
07/04 NO MORE BOZO Bozo the clown died. Man, what a bummer. I loved Bozo the clown.
07/04 FIREWORKS FUNERAL I guess having your ashes shot out into the fireworks display is one way to have your funeral. It’s creepy as hell but it is one way to do it I guess.
06/23 GEORGE CARLIN DEAD Comedian and actor George Carlin passed away Sunday at the age of 71 of apparent heart failure. I was shocked. He has been my favorite comedian for a very long time.
