If you have already perused parts one, two, and three of this series of posts, I hardly need to tell you that I’m still expounding upon the AIGA “get out the vote” poster campaign.

A particularly salient category of the posters is…

THE PARTISAN ONES

This was supposed to be a non-partisan effort. The message of the posters was supposed to be “Vote,” not, “Vote for some particular guy.” But, graphic designers, while they sometimes may seem superhumanly noble, are not immune to the temptation to sneak in a plug for their fellow. At least, the liberal ones aren’t immune.

The two verbose posters above, by two different designers, say pretty much the same thing: Your vote is important, because since four years ago, some very bad, evil, naughty things have happened. Without naming names, we demand that you vote for, you know, someone who hasn’t been president for the last four years, is all.

And the one with the two doors. This might actually have made the “really good ones” group, because it’s a good use of symbolism (blue = left = Democrat, red = right = Republican, get it?) But the designer didn’t stop when he was done. He wanted to be sure you knew which was the correct door. Over the blue Democrat door he wrote “BRAND NEW CAR!” Over the red Republican door it says only “LEOPARD.” Probably a mean rabid leopard that will kill you and then take away your health insurance. (But how would a car fit through that door? I smell a lie.)

But then I noticed a few designers who, while obviously trying not to infuse any pro-Bush values into their work, nonetheless ended up producing posters with a message sympathetic to the Republican cause.

Like that one to the left. Creative arrangement of the elements of the U.S. flag? Or is it great big red bars batting around little blue squares? Take that, and that, and that, you lousy blue squares! That felt good, thanks.

Or the two below. If you follow the instructions (”Make the world a better place,” and “Choose a positive and prosperous future”), guess what? You’re voting for Bush! Nicely done.

When you’re ready, we’ll wrap up this series with a look at “the maybe not-so-good ones.”

As I described in the first and second parts of this series of posts, the AIGA is solving the problem of voter apathy by designing more than 200 posters. I am assisting by both showing and categorizing a couple dozen of these posters.

Here is a category which perhaps not everyone might agree is a separate genre, but which I find useful to treat as such:

THE ONES WITH PICTURES OF PRETTY GIRLS ON THEM

This category includes all those posters which prominently feature a photo or drawing of a pretty girl or woman of any age, or any part thereof.

Generally speaking, this category enjoys a built-in advantage over the other categories in this exhibition, in that pretty girls are what we experts call “good looking.” Generally speaking. Even so, the standards of graphic design must still be met. Some of these posters meet those standards. Others… well, you’ll see.

(The two specimens below belong to the subcategory of “the ones with pretty girls sporting ‘Vote’ tattoos on their backs.”)

Oh, and you’ll no doubt be relieved to know that none of these poster designs is offensive. The AIGA says so: “Messages or images that are likely to offend substantial numbers of citizens are not appropriate, since they would be counter to our intention of developing messages that encourage voter participation through effective use of images, text and ideas.” I’m glad to hear that, because I might have worried otherwise…

What I like about the “Reality Check” one, above, is it’s really a clever subtle dig at Senator John Edwards, whose overly fussy preening has been a recurring object of ridicule. And I think those are Laura Bush’s legs.

Which makes an expert segue into our next category, “the partisan ones.”

As I described in part I of this series of posts, the AIGA is stamping out voter apathy with posters, and I’m helping. I will be showing you a couple dozen of these AIGA “get out the vote” posters throughout the day, along with my expert commentary.

There are over 200 posters on offer, but they all seem to fall into a handful of broad categories (although these categories do overlap, with some posters falling into more than one). The first category I would like to discuss is…

THE REALLY GOOD ONES

Some of the many posters belong to the category we experts call the “really good ones.” They may be very simple, or rather intricate, but they all deliver a clear message, with appropriate and well-executed graphics. (I’m showing these three, but certainly not implying that these are the only three in this category.)

The contiguous 48-state USA silhouette is a bit overused. But two of these posters put the cliché to innovative use, drawing the reader in for a longer look. The other uses a speech balloon to illustrate that voting is how citizens make themselves heard. I like speech balloons.

The next category is what I should like to call…

THE ALMOST REALLY GOOD ONES

These are the ones that came this close to being numbered among the really good ones, but suffered from some minor defect in execution. Like the “Never Forget” sample, above, with signatures from the Declaration of Independence. Beautiful work, great concept. Never forget. Never forget what? To vote? Shoulda said so somewhere, then. The poster doesn’t say “vote,” so it’s missing the call to action. The Lady Liberty poster, on the other hand, has everything it needs to be really good, except it lost points for being that shade of green.

Speaking of ladies, the next category of posters up for discussion is “the ones with pretty girls on them.”

So, you should… oh, you’ve clicked already, haven’t you. Okay, see you there.

What do graphic designers talk about amongst themselves? Oh, lots of things. Like, how important graphic designers are to the existence of civilization, and how awesome LCD monitors are, and how without graphic design there is no truth, and how clients can be such jerks because all they want is for their logo to be twice as big as the page it’s printed on, and how very very much the people of Earth need graphic designers to make the world a better place. Lots of things.

THE AIGA “GET OUT THE VOTE” CAMPAIGN
The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) asks, “What are the reasons for voter apathy and lack of civic responsibility? And can design be used to help solve the problem?” These, one can safely assume, are rhetorical questions, because instead of answering them with “(1) Not enough posters, and (2) yes,” they jump right into page after page of “get out the vote” posters. At last count, they have 212 of them, submitted by various AIGA member graphic designers from across the country.

In order to eradicate apathy, the AIGA invites everyone to “spread the word by distributing them [the posters, they mean] to friends, putting them up in shop windows and posting them to message boards.” So I’m going to do all three right now. (This website is my shop window and message board. And you’re my friend.) I won’t put all 212 of them up, but I’ll put up a couple dozen, over the course of several posts today. That should decrease apathy by, what, 11 percent? Not bad.

If you click on any of the poster images, you will be downloading an Adobe PDF version of the poster, suitable for printing at 11″ x 17″. Some of those PDFs are huge files (up to 24 megabytes!), just so you know.

Now, please proceed to part II of this series, wherein we discuss the really good ones.

Looks like we picked a good month to start a blog. Not only was October 2004 an intensely campaigned election month, but it was also the month of two major news stories covered thoroughly here on blog.gleeson.us and nowhere else (no, not even Drudge), namely the shocking nudegate scandal, and the birth of Matthew Gilbert Gleeson. We also exclusively unearthed the Kerry and Edwards debate cheat sheets, and brought you front-row seats to the Springsteen-bin Laden “Vote or Die” tour.

Oh, hey, here’s a bar chart.

At first, it seemed like we were in for a rocky takeoff, with technical difficulties plaguing our newly minted subdomain for the first six days of the month. But these problems were solved, and good thing too, for it was not many days later that our traffic broke all previous records, thanks to the satirical photo essay “Apologizing to Saddam is groovy.”

Totals for the month: 52,176 visits, and 79,566 pageviews.
Averages for the month: 1,683 visits per day, and 2,567 pageviews per day.

Where do we go from here? Up, we think. Tell your friends about us. (And remember, before you vote tomorrow, print out our endorsements for the races in your zip code.)