The Obama Art Report

1. Vital Stats
Name: Aaron Perry-Zucker
Age: 21
Location: Providence, RI
Occupation: Student

2. First off, give us a little background on who you are, what you do, all that.

I am currently a full-time student at the Rhode Island School of Design studying graphic design. Grew up in Los Angeles but it looks like I’m a full-time East Coaster now.

3. If you don’t mind my saying, Design for Obama is an amazing site and amazing concept at that. Could you tell us how it all got started? How you got it off the ground?

Designforobama.org was thought up and built in about two weeks at the end of this summer when a community design blog designobserver.com offered up the domain name designersforobama.org and asked the question “What can designers and artists be doing to support Barack Obama?” I presented my idea for an open engagement kind of site providing easy access to high quality files so that anybody with a printer could print huge posters designed by everyone. Working with a friend at RISD, Adam Meyer, we were able to design, build, and launch a working website within a couple of weeks and the submissions and publicity all started rolling in.

4. To date, over 400 designs have been submitted. One great aspect of your site is how everyone is allowed to rate, comment and critique pieces… do you have a personal top 5?

I have many favorites but I am particularly partial to a series done by artist MAFmove (http://www.designforobama.org/index.php?user=1008) as well as most of the posters done by dumbrobot (http://www.designforobama.org/index.php?user=1071) all of which were very popular on the site.

5. Out of curiosity, did you ever have to deal with people trying to post McCain or anti-Obama works?

Astonishingly we did not receive any negative posters; the response was overwhelmingly positive.

6. One of the DFO’s best features, in my opinion, is how viewers are allowed to download and print, for free, any images they like.. Do you know how many downloads have been taken off the site?

Unfortunately that number will forever remain a mystery. I looked into finding that out early on and found that there was no system in place to count that. We setup a Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/dfo/) in the hopes of keeping track of where some of these posters went but I am pretty sure that this is only represents a small percentage of the posters out in the world based on the number of people that have told me in person, email and the comments, that they downloaded their favorites and plastered them on their walls or in public places.

While a number of the designs on the site are attributed to my username (usually for someone famous that gave permission to upload a poster, like Ron English) I only designed two incredibly simple posters (http://www.designforobama.org/index.php?p=528 and http://www.designforobama.org/index.php?p=118). Instead spending my time processing and all of the posters that were coming in (usually much faster than I could keep up with).

8. I think that in the future, scholars and historians will definitely be discussing the Obama campaign’s effect on the artistic community. DFO is a perfect example of that. A staggeringly sheer volume of talented designers and artists have been inspired by Obama, why do you think that is?

I think that many factors all peaked at the right time. For starters, you have an incredibly inspiring candidate that runs the most grass-roots campaign in history that truly embraces both technology and design. Thee atmosphere that this created was one of infinite potential in which everyone wanted to contribute in some way more than just voting. When you put an opportunity like this in front of a creative community (along with the right tools and venues) then the result looks something like what we saw; an outpouring of creative energy and work the likes of which have never been produced by so large a community (in the past it was always the same volume of propaganda but it was all coming from one team or group. The fact that this was all done by supporters completely changes the game.)

9. As a member of the college demographic, what effect do you think the design element of this election had on the massive young voter turn out?

I can only really speak for the art school demographic but I would guess that in addition to Obama’s obvious appeal to young voters, the amount of work that came out of the various communities really provided a means for young people to get involved and excited that was never really present before. Also, the posters travelled virally across virtually every social networking website (where young people spend a lot of time).

10. You’re wrapping up your last year at RISD (that’s Shepard Fairey’s alumnus in case you readers weren’t aware!), what lies for you after college?

That is an excellent question that I get asked more and more frequently and which I still have no real answer for. I am currently still quite busy with all of the fallout from designforobama which includes a number of gallery shows around the inauguration and a book that Spike Lee is helping to publish highlighting the entire collection of designforobama posters.