Manufacturing Quality Dissent Since 1989
Shepard Fairey’s career began when he jokingly created a sticker of wrestler Andre the Giant.
You’ve seen them: ‘Andre the Giant has a Posse‘ stickers, Obey Giant posters, Andre’s face covering entire sides of buildings… You’ve seen them and you’ve wondered what it was all about. And once you found out, perhaps you wondered why.
The visual codes used by Shepard Fairey, aka Obey Giant, are worthy of those of Stalinist propaganda, but here they highlight the mechanisms of advertising propaganda which invade public space.
“Some people look at my work and go: “Oh, it’s condemning capitalism“. No, not at all, I’m a capitalist. I believe in capitalism, I believe it motivates people, that competition is good. I believe it can be ruthless; there should be good checks and balances for it, but the best checks and balances are the consumers themselves, not some sort of government regulations”.
My advice is do not get discouraged because it takes awhile but it will definitely happen faster if you make something that stands out from the crowd. A lot of people just copy each others styles when a style is hot and that’s definitely not the way to get anywhere because you’ll always be following. You want to be leading. You want to carve out a niche for yourself that no one else is doing, is filling. So, really it’s whatever you enjoy the most as an artist is what you are going to be best at.
Fender Shepard Fairey 50’s Relic Strat
Squier OBEY Graphic Series