Posters and Election Propaganda

Guerrilla artist Shepard Fairey's posters, done in support of Barack Obama's candidacy for the U.S. presidency,  won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2009 contest, which was organized by the Design Museum of London.

Fairey's posters triumphed over 90 other designs.

Fairey was praised by the judges for designing posters that “breathed new life into a form that had lost its purpose,” and because the posters “came not from a marketing campaign, but as a self-initiated fundraising campaign.”

Some other awards—in individual categories—included the following:

Interactive: Make Magazine, which covered home kits to make technology projects easily.

Fashion: Italian Vogue’s “Black Issue,”  which pictured four black models on the cover and was devoted exclusively to successful black women.

Product: Singgih S. Kartono, who designed the Magno Wooden Radio, which was made of local, sustainable materials in an Indonesian village.

Architecture: Snohetta, for designing Norway's New Oslo Opera House.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=muse&sid=aw6fyV9zlHpA

Last month, the Swiss electorate voted for a referendum allowing the free movement of workers in 27 European Union (EU) countries. Almost 60% favored the referendum.

The opposition to the referendum was led by the Swiss People's Party (SVP), the top vote-getting party in parliamentary elections in Switzerland, and producer of the infamous "black sheep" poster of 2007 (see previous blog entry).

This time around, the SVP disseminated a poster that showed several black crows pecking at a map of Switzerland. The crows probably symbolize Romania and Bulgaria (the newest, but poorer countries in the EU), which the SVP believes will flood wealthier Switzerland with workers, taking jobs away from Swiss citizens and increasing costs for
social-welfare benefits.