Branding the President

The Barack Obama Inaugural Committee is releasing an official inauguration poster designed by famed street artist Shepard Fairey, the print, created especially for the 2009 Inauguration, boldly declares "BE THE CHANGE." The image will be available on buttons, lapel pins, stickers and t-shirts. The poster will officially be released tomorrow on the Inaugural Committee's online store. I never picked up one of Fairey’s campaign posters, so this might be the one for me.

CNN Gets it Right

Associated Press: The 129-year-old Hatch Show Print, one of the few commercial letterpress printers in the country that have survived decades of obscurity and are now enjoying a revival in the midst of a digital age. CNN hired the business - whose designers handcraft posters using wood or metal blocks in much the same way printers did for hundreds of years- to design and create nearly all of its promotional materials for its presidential election coverage. Belmont University will hand out Hatch Show Print posters to everyone who attends the upcoming presidential debate on the college campus.
This is the same shop that made Elvis Presley's posters, Hank Williams' and Bill Monroe's. It has created posters for Pearl Jam and the Beastie Boys. It supplied traveling circuses and vaudeville acts with the posters that advertised shows in the earlier part of the last century."We're huge fans of their work and their approach," said CNN's marketing director, Scot Safon. "Anyone who cares about design knows what they do and loves what they do."

Note: Visit the Hatch Show Print shop for some stunning vintage restrike posters. 

Window Dressing

The Obama campaign has inspired a whole new wave of political poster design as we’ve seen with the work of Shepard Fairey and Scott Hansen. Today I found this wonderful site called Hand-Painted Obama ‘08 signs that are hand-painted with flourescent and black tempura paint on durable white paper, custom made for your windows, “made to fade, baby”. They are only charging $25 (and anything you pay over that goes directly to the Obama for America ‘08 campaign, a good place to donate a few more dollars to the effort). Especially clever is that for $200 they will provide custom window posters for McCain & Paulin, donating $150 of it to the Obama campaign. Brilliant, and some great art for election season. (Via Draplin)

Type Revolution

Effective and well-done typographic poster for Obama’s Berlin speech tomorrow. (Via Coudal)