Posters give Occupy a visual voice

Columbia’s The Half and Half graphic design studio is helping Occupy Wall Street protesters solidify their message with the Occupy Poster Project.

Based out of a small brick building tucked away on College Street in Five Points, the firm began reaching out to designers across the globe for poster designs to be printed and donated to various Occupy camps across the nation in early October.

“We had the idea and we knew we had to act fast,” said Sara Thomas, the shop’s creative director. “It was a time sensitive thing.”

The shop has lent their work to worthy causes in the past, most notably the Haiti Poster Project and the California Fire Poster Project, but they had never attempted to facilitate such a creative coalition themselves. Their motivation for doing so this time around was the lack of a defining visual concept for the movement. Thomas’ design counterpart Nick Wilson doesn’t dislike the protesters’ current display; he just thinks it could be improved.

“I totally understand the expression of whatever you want to say,” Wilson said. “I just think it would have so much more impact if things just looked a little bit better. That’s design in general, I guess.”

The venture gained traction when Thomas sent out emails to 10 of her favorite designers gauging interest in creating visuals to be sent directly to and displayed by occupiers. The requirements were simple – compose a 20-by-30 inch work in one color, either red or black.

“For this sort of stuff, I think it works better because it’s more bold,” Thomas said of the color restriction. “From a totally production-based standpoint, it’s a lot easier for us.”

The Half and Half agreed to curate the submissions and print them in mass quantities to be sent free of charge to various locations of the movement.

“Most of them just wrote back immediately,” Wilson said. “These are internationally known names. It’s pretty cool.”

Brooklyn’s James Victore, an admitted hero of The Half and Half staff, was one of the first artists to respond. His black-and-white “Eat Obama” print is one of the more evocative pieces in the project’s collection. The poster’s scribbled text and cartoon-like ham isn’t meant to be a direct indictment of the president, but it is supposed to serve as a catalyst for discussion. Victore is known for his politically challenging work.

“It validated the project, I think, in a lot of people’s eyes,” Thomas said of having Victore on board. “It was like, ‘Oh my God, I want to be included in a project with James Victore.’”

Alongside Victore’s pork production are works from Art Chantry, an artist who has designed album covers for among others Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Brooklyn’s Dan Cassaro and Columbia designer Sei Rey Ho. Ho’s image of two intertwined snakes, one a deep black and the other a light gray, harkens to the classic “Don’t Tread on Me” flag design, called the Gadsden flag after Christopher Gadsden, a Revolutionary War hero who fought in South Carolina.

“The approach I was taking was to go for something simple, something iconic,” Ho said. “I chose to do the two snakes, the black and white, to represent the duality and the balance, or the lack thereof. It’s a little bit open...the audience or the viewer can interpret in whichever direction they want.”

The images have been mass produced onto newsprint using screen print process, with the majority of the finished products making their way to New York. Though they only have seven posters up on their website, submissions continue to flood the business’ inbox. They have an estimated 40 new designs that they plan on printing, including entries from France and the U.K. Artists and designers keep using the project as a way to show solidarity for Occupy and to express themselves in new and challenging ways.

“It’s kind of like one way I can express myself,” Ho said of his inclusion in the project. “Writers write stories, musicians write songs; it’s just one way for me to kind of put something out there about it. It was good with The Half and Half throwing this series; it gave me the opportunity.”

A defining graphic for Occupy’s brand has yet to be determined. The Half and Half hopes that eventually graphics created for their brainchild collaborative will rise to logo-like prominence, much like the graffiti-inspired image of President Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey during the 2008 presidential campaign.

The firm remains amazed by the outpouring of support and response to their efforts within the design community.

“I think it kind of speaks to the project,” Wilson said. “Everybody’s in it together. Regardless of anything else, it’s one denominator – a common denominator – between all of us.”