Shepard Fairey- Political Posters

For my final task I wanted to focus on Political posters, as they are a significant talking point in politics, they have caused many stirs, and are a significant persuading point. Below I have analysed some political posters. Political posters often use satire or irony to convey a visual metaphor, which contains two elects a target and a source. They usual have a target, which is what they are trying to describe, and the source is what connects the target with the metaphor, which conveys whatever the poster is about. 

Fig 1- Saatchi and Saatchi

This poster, photographed and produced by Saatchi and Saatchi was initially rejected by Margaret Thatcher, she commented that “You know perfectly well that you should never have the other side’s name in your own poster!”Labour’s Denis Healey called it a “fraud” after learning that the people illustrated in the queue were suppose to be members of Hendon Young conservatives. This ran for weeks, it was estimated that this poster earned the equivalent of £5m in free publicity. So by creating this controversial poster it caused stir within the political parties, meaning that it was publican viewed many times, meaning that people were becoming more interested and concerned with the electoral process, meaning more attention for the parties. 

Whilst researching I found the artist who created the famous Obama 'Hope' poster, Shepard Fairey. In an interview with Patrick Kingsley with the Guardian newspaper Shepard commenting that "Obama hasn’t done as well as I hoped, but I created the poster with the understanding that people in office can only achieve so much. I originally made it just as a grassroots thing, and at the time it said ‘progress’. Then someone showed it to the campaign team, and they asked if the word could be changed to 'hope', because right-wingers associate progressives with socialists. But it was never officially adopted by the campaign.”

Fig 2- Shepard Fairey

For this task I have created several versions of a political poster based on the Brexit scale. I looked at the poster below for inspiration, used the original words and layout and then formed my graphics and theme around it. 

Fig 3 - A propaganda poster from 1942 encouraging unity between labor and management of GM

I thought that could take the slogan which surrounded Brexiit of 'we are stronger together' and twist that ironically to fit the poster. I started by creating balloons using the flags each of the countries in the EU. I then added the slogan from my target poster, using similar colours, to make the connection seem more obvious, plus they are the colours of the UK flag. 

I then added a UK balloon, which is floating away from the rest of the balloon (the EU). I then added a texture to the background to make it more interesting. I wanted to graffiti the text, as a symbol of a revolt/revolution. I had a couple of idea on how to do this, the tricky part was making the text make sense after mocking it. For the first example I simple, crossed out the word 'together' as we are not together as part of the EU and change the word 'can' to 'can't', to contradict both this slogan, and the slogan of the Brexit campaign 'stronger together'.

For my second example I simply added at the end of the slogan 'or not', so that altogether 'together we can do it, or not'. A sarcastic comment which I thought represented the view of a fair few Brexit voters.

I didn't feel that the colours were working well together, so I made the balloon the same colour as the background, but the tonal range remained so you can still identify each flag. I am pleased with my thought process for this piece, but not the overall piece. I don't think it flows well together, and so if i had more time I would have liked to have drawn out the balloon, and then have applied the flag into the balloon, adding texture, giving it a more illustrative touch, and making the style look more like the original target poster. 

Image References


Fig 1-  Delaney, S. (2016). The 10 best British political posters. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/03/the-10-best-british-political-posters [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
Fig 2- Kingsley, P. (2016). Beyond Obama's Hope: the work of Shepard Fairey. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/oct/17/obamas-hope-the-work-of-shepard-fairey [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
Fig 3- En.wikipedia.org. (2016). We Can Do It!. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Do_It!#/media/File:TOGETHER_WE_CAN_DO_IT_-_KEEP_%60EM_FIRING_-_NARA_-_515856.jpg [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].

Bibliography

• Artnet.com. (2016). Shepard Fairey | artnet. [online] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/shepard-fairey/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• Delaney, S. (2016). The 10 best British political posters. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/03/the-10-best-british-political-posters [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
• En.wikipedia.org. (2016). Barack Obama \. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• En.wikipedia.org. (2016). We Can Do It!. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Do_It!#/media/File:TOGETHER_WE_CAN_DO_IT_-_KEEP_%60EM_FIRING_-_NARA_-_515856.jpg [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
• Kingsley, P. (2016). Beyond Obama's Hope: the work of Shepard Fairey. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/oct/17/obamas-hope-the-work-of-shepard-fairey [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
• Obey Giant. (2016). Obey Giant - The Art of Shepard Fairey. [online] Available at: https://obeygiant.com [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• Stephy Chung, C. (2016). Obama 'Hope' artist's take on Donald Trump. [online] CNN. Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/07/arts/shepard-fairey-interview/