Print

So this lecture was about how far screen printing has come since early cave paintings thousands of years ago to the present day.

A key focus of the lecture was the wrestler 'Andre the Giant'. In a WWF fight up against the American wrestler 'Jake the Snake', Jake released a snake into the ring knowing Andre was afraid of them. Andre stepped out of the ring and abandoned the fight.

The fight took place in America and many people looked at Andre after this and instead of viewing him as this tough giant saw him as weak and a loser.

Then the street artist/graphic designer Shepard Fairey came across a photo of the wrestler in a newspaper and created the stencil Andre the Giant Has a Posse.

Using the stencil design he printed thousands of stickers and put them everywhere, on laptops, buses, street signs etc. The sticker soon became a cultural phenomenon and the sticker evolved into the 'OBEY' poster. 

I feel people responded to the OBEY sticker campaign because people are interested in stuff that's weird, different and to me most importantly, not obvious. What I mean by this is that when you see an advert it is usually blatantly obvious what it's advertising. And if it's not obvious it's seen as a bad advert. In modern day society we are bombarded with signage telling us to do things 'Drink this…' 'Buy this…' 'Do this…' etc. It's almost like people are treated like zombies who can't think for themselves. 

Then this poster starts appearing everywhere and our perceptions are completely shaken up. 

Suddenly people are seeing something everywhere that is not telling them anything. It doesn't say why it exists or what you have to do, it's just a slightly ominous face. I love the campaign because it encourages people to think about what they look at everyday. It isn't obvious what the image means, if you want to find out, you actually have to research it. And even then you might not get the answers you were looking for.

It isn't the only time Shepard Fairey as sparked a cultural phenomenon, he has also used screen printing to influence people politically. Such as in the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign with the now iconic HOPE image.