Elizabeth Amorose : Women comprise 51% of the American population and are clearly not a special interest group, even though Republican leaders often treat us that way. Through the Fair Pay Act, Obamacare, and his public statements, Barack Obama has demonstrated his commitment to women. What better reason to vote for him? For this poster, I used embroidery, a medium that evokes a sense of Americana. And it is an often marginalized or dismissed art form, much like the sex that practices it almost exclusively.
Woody Pirtle : Clearly, Romney is a good businessman but he can’t be trusted to look out for the average American. He’s already dismissed 47% of us and 52 of the remaining 53% should be skeptical that he’s going to watch their backs. His Romney/Ryan plan is focused on the remaining 1% and will strip away the progress we’ve made in the last 4 years. Let’s stick with Obama and keep moving forward. We can’t afford to go back to the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
Tomi Um : High quality education makes fertile ground for students to aim higher and achieve their dreams. President Obama knows that educated students make for a better country and a brighter world.
Bonnie Siegler : Obama’s position on women’s rights, foreign policy, education, health care, the environment, marriage equality and immigration are all compelling reasons to re-elect him. However, for me, the most important reason (and one that affects all the others) remains the simple and beautiful fact that he CARES. I think that unique yet often overlooked fact deserves special attention. (Photograph by Pete Souza).
See more posters here.
Vienna, Austria
PEZ was created in 1927 by Austrian health-fanatic Edward Haas III, using oil of peppermint (at that time, only available from chemists) to create a candy for adults. The name “PEZ” comes from the German word for peppermint… PfeffeErminZ. Initially sold in tin containers (much like Altoids), PEZ were marketed as a luxury breath freshener. In 1949, PEZ came out with a pocket-sized dispenser, resembling the shape of a cigarette lighter—and began to be marketed as a sophisticated alternative to smoking. “The lighter-shaped dispenser was not only a trick to play on smokers asking for a light, but it was hygienic, allowing PEZ users to give the candy to friends without touching it.” The company’s motto in 1949 was “No smoking—PEZing allowed.”
The real marketing break-through for PEZ came by means of a graphic artist named Gerhard Brause, whose sexy depiction of the PEZ girl helped spread the brand around the world (PEZ was introduced in the USA in 1952, but marketing was soon focused on children instead, primarily through the use of dispensers featuring “character” heads). Nowadays PEZ is available in over 80 countries with 65 million dispensers and 4.2 billion PEZ candies consumed every year.
I grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, and I remember acquiring my first PEZ pocket dispenser while in Kindergarten in 1958—at that time, we would buy PEZ refills from wall-mounted coin-operated vending machines. Shown above are some of the PEZ Girl illustrations created by Gerhard Brause.
New York, USA
When I began full-time practice back in 1976, the profession of graphic design was going through some dynamic changes. Looking back, if I were to identify the 10 designers who I was most influenced by, Herb Lubalin (1918-1981) would certainly be on that list—his bold and innovative graphic approach, engaging ligatures, and eclectic typography are unforgettable.
A new monograph on Herb Lubalin has just been published, and a nice set of Lubalin images can be found online here.
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Friends of mine in the USA have jumped back into the fray… 30 designers will each create a poster that represents a reason to re-elect President Obama.
Back in ’08 we featured posters by some of the best designers and artists in America. We reached hundreds of thousands of registered voters, and are upping the ante for 2012. This year we’re providing powerful visual messages and the facts to back them up. Let’s stop the misinformation and give voters 30 reasons to vote for Barack Obama in November.
Starting on October 8th, we’ll reveal a new poster on 30reasons.org every day until the election. Join our mailing list, and we’ll email you each poster so you can share them with fellow supporters or undecided friends.
Moscow, Russia
The “Space Age” began on 4 October 1957 with the Soviet Union’s launch into orbit of Sputnik—the first man-made satellite.
Na zdorovye!
From the 1930s… many more here.
(Thanks to my friend JuanMa Sepulvida in Madrid for the link).
If we are to create balanced human beings, capable of entering into world-wide co-operation with all other men of good will—and that is the supreme task of our generation, and the foundation of all its other potential achievements—we must give as much weight to the arousal of the emotions and to the expression of moral and esthetic values as we now give to science, to invention, to practical organization. One without the other is impotent. And values do not come ready-made: they are achieved by a resolute attempt to square the facts of one’s own experience with the historic patterns formed in the past by those who devoted their whole lives to achieving and expressing values.
If we are to express the love in our own hearts, we must also understand what love meant to Socrates and Saint Francis, to Dante and Shakespeare, to Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, to the explorer Shackleton and to the intrepid physicians who deliberately exposed themselves to yellow fever. These historic manifestations of love are not recorded in the day’s newspaper or the current radio program: they are hidden to people who possess only fashionable minds.
Virtue is not a chemical product, as Taine once described it: it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key. That, I submit, is what has happened in our own lifetime.
—Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) Values for Survival, 1946
