Question Everything—Shepard Fairey

Biographical Info

Shepard Fairy is a contemporary, Los Angeles based, American street artist who is still currently working. He was born on February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina. His father was a physician so already from a young age he had an authorative figure in his life (besides the fact that he was his father). In 1984 at the age of fourteen he started to get into the skating scene, where he decorated his skateboards and many T-shirts after being influenced by his love of stickers. He also started to listen to punk rock. He later went to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration in 1992. It was at this time, at the age of nineteen and during the beginning of his college career, that he created his first Andre sticker, which soon evolved into the cultural phenomenon known as “OBEY.”

OBEY
Obey was Fairey’s first success in terms of creating art that circulated rapidly. It all started when Fairy began working at a skate shop during his college career designing homemade T-shirts and stickers. Upon showing an admirer of his work how to make paper-cut stencils Fairey stumbled upon a really “funny picture” as he describes it, of Andre the Giant. He cut the image out, put Andre’s height and weight to the right and the line “Andre the Giant has a Posse” to the left. This was Shepard Fairey’s first Andre sticker.

Fairey soon became obsessed with posting his stickers all over Providence, Rhode Island. Stickers to him were a great form of graffiti because they were easy to put on but very difficult to take off. The popularity of his stickers soon rose very quickly after the local indie publication printed the sticker and offered a reward to anyone who could reveal its source and meaning. Fairey built off this success and soon spread his campaign to Boston and New York. However, with continued success Fairey developed a new, more refined version of his sticker and dropped the word Andre for copyright issues. He then added the phrase “Obey Giant” and eventually evolved into simply “Obey.”

The Obey campaign became a phenomenon and spread like a virus. Fairey used the helped of eager friends he knew to post his stickers in the cities they lived in. Obey had a snowball effect and couldn’t be stopped. Soon enough there were Obey posters and stickers in almost every major city in the world. It used sarcasm as means to project the meaning of doing the exact opposite of Obey and question obedience itself. Fairy states “OBEY GIANT attempts to simultaneously bring the viewer to question propaganda absorption and to encourage a democratization of the use of public space in a spectator democracy,”[1] which meant that everyone had a reaction to his images. The underground scene loved it for its rebellious attributes and paranoid people hated it for the propagandistic feel the image gave off. Either way the Obey campaign excited emotions in everyone. Obey became something that could not be ignored because if you tried it would just get under your skin.

Commercial Success
Shepard Fairey used the momentum of his OBEY campaign and started becoming commercially successful. OBEY eventually became an all around alternative empire by developing into a clothing company, magazine publisher, and graphic-design agency. He ran his first studio called Alternate Graphics from 1992–1996. It was during this time that Fairey developed the OBEY GIANT clothing/skateboard line and furthered his Propaganda movement earning him various gallery shows. BLK/MRKT Design was then co-founded in 1996 in San Diego, CA by Dave Kinsey and Shepard Fairey himself. The firm specialized in graphics and marketing for the action sports and music industry while still constantly dishing out OBEY stickers and posters. Shepard Fairey stayed with BLK/MRKT until 2003 when he opened Studio Number One design with his wife Amanda Fairey. Studio Number One produced recognizable graphics such as the Monkey Business album cover for the Black Eyed Peas and the movie poster for Walk the Line.

With all this success many have criticized that Fairey had turned his back on the issues that “street art” associates itself with. Issues that concern avoiding conformity and the condemnation of corporations making him a sort of hypocrite. However, Fairey justifies himself as an artist that needs to make money in order to keep his campaigns and movements going.

HOPE
Shepard Fairey’s most recognized work is often seen as the Obama “Hope” poster. The poster shows a portrait of Barack Obama appearing as if he is looking off toward a brighter future in stencil form with the red, white, and blue colors and the word “Hope” right underneath. Many people, including critics, see the Hope poster as the most influential political illustration in American culture since “Uncle Sam Wants You.”

The creating and use of the poster, however, was not a simple process. The poster initially was meant to say “Progression” instead of “Hope” but was insisted that it change in collaboration with Obama campaign officials. The Hope poster was accompanied with two other versions that used the words “Change” and “Vote” upon release. Also, Fairey ran into some legal problems in producing the poster. He took the reference image from a photo that was in the Associated Press, which was taken by photographer Mannie Garcia at the National Press Club conference in April 2006. Garcia felt he needed to be accredited for the image since it was taken without his permission and filed a suit against Fairey. Fairey’s defense was within the legal definition of “fair use.” Be that as it may, Mannie Garcia stated “"If you put all the legal stuff away, I’m so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it's had”[6] giving Fairey an indication of approval of the work he did.

Law Abiding Citizen?

Shepard Fairey has had his run in with the law more than a few times. Over his career he has been arrested a total of fifteen times, all having to do with graffiti charges. His most notorious one, though, was on February 7, 2009. Fairey had two outstanding warrants related to graffiti in Boston, Massachusetts and was arrested on his way to the premier of his show at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Long time friend Z-Trip made the announcement at his show. Nonetheless, many have seen this arrest as a good thing, saying that he hasn’t gone totally mainstream.

Question Everything

Shepard Fairey has based his career off the notion to question everything. His constant challenging of the status quo and has become a life’s quest and continues to do so to this day. Using the philosophy that “the medium is the message” he chooses to use street art as a way communicate more directly with an audience rather than being stuck in the limited world of museums and curators. Shepard Fairey truly does question everything.

Bibliography

[1]Fairey, Shepard. OBEY: Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2006.

[2]Fairy, Shepard. Post No Bills. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2002.

[3]Lewisohn, Cedar. Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution. New York, NY: Abrams, 2008.

[4]Schjeldahl, Peter. “The Art World—A Shepard Fairey Retrospective.” The New Yorker (February 23, 2009): 79.

[5]Vienne, Veronique. “Fairey the Giant.” Print 60, part 4 (2006): 106.

[6]Wikipedia, “Shepard Fairey.” March 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey

Images
1.) Shepard Fairey from Wikipedia
2.) "Andre the Giant has a Posse" from Obey: Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey
3.) "Obey" from Obey: Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey
4.) "Walk the Line" from Obey: Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey
5.) "Hope" from Google Images

Typeface helps meaning

Today there are millions of new typefaces and borders are less rigid with the internet. Find anexample of a typeface in use, please post it as a jpeg or pdf and please state how you think the typeface choice helps create meaning to theimage. (This could be from informational graphics, poster, logo, or advertisement.)

One typeface that really helps create meaning, not necessarily to the image itself, but to the image of an entire company is that in the Hallmark logo.

The style of this particular typeface is script. While the letter "H" is not linked to the other letter forms it still fits because it appears as if was hand lettered like the rest of the word.

The hand lettered look of the typeface compliments the company. Why you may ask? Well when people think of Hallmark most of them come up with the notion of greeting cards. If you think about it most people write inside greeting cards and almost everyone signs them. So, the handwritten essence of the greeting card is picked up within the typeface of the logo and the entire image of the company is summarized in just one word "Hallmark."

Design, Culture, and Language

1.) Design—Design is a verb and a noun. It describes a field in which people create things in every spectrum from art to physics. It also describes a process in which everything man-made isn't just made but "designed" to fit certain standards and to get the optimum performance or outcome intended. These man-made things not only include physical constructions, but also abstract ideas.

2.) Culture—Culture, to me, describes certain norms that a collective body of people or community developed overtime. These norms can range from traditions to everyday living. Every community has developed their own culture overtime and continues to evolve with the generations.

3.) Language— Language does not just have to deal with words and grammar used by a collective body of people but also how people develop ways to communicate with each other in ways they can relate to. For example, the language of the computer programming world is binary code whilst the language of the music world is notes, tones, chords, etc.

These three all influence one another quite often. Language in a community can be developed because of the culture that is present. In this case the language in the culture is "designed" to accomodate their needs for communication ( culture+design=language). Likewise, culture and language can influence how everything is designed in that culture. For example, here in Tucson we have developed a culture that is described as "southwestern." Many homes here are designed to look like old-style adobes or have a very rustic/desert look to them. These stylistic approaches are the language of this culture speaking out.