An interior view of the "We the Designers" exhibition at the AIGA National Design Center in New York City.
“We the Designers” is a national exhibition of self-authored graphic design on view through April 5 at the AIGA National Design Center in NYC.
The 2008 campaign to elect President Barack Obama highlighted the role of graphic design in national politics. While previous campaigns used posters and collateral to great effect — the “I Like Ike” posters and buttons for General Dwight D. Eisenhower spring to mind — Obama’s was arguably the first presidential campaign to employ a sophisticated professional strategy to create a candidate’s visual identity. The Obama logo and typographic framework, developed by Sol Sender and Scott Thomas, represented a degree of sophistication associated more with corporate and institutional branding. It was unprecedented for political office. Just as influential, an unofficial poster by Shepard Fairey — despite copyright infringement prosecution for unauthorized use of an Associated Press photograph — fused the idealized image of the candidate with what was then a simple campaign slogan. Through design, Obama and the concept of “hope” became one and the same.
