I've found the work of Shepard Fairey very inspiring over the last few weeks. I touched on his work briefly in a previous post, as i found some book covers done by him, but thought i'd write about him in a bit more detail as i'm thinking of basing the style of my book cover on his work.
Shepard rose to popularity during '08, when his Barack Obama poster 'Hope' was released, along with a matching sticker.
These were not commissioned by Obama's campaign team, although they were interested in it, and Fairey eventually got a thank you letter from Obama himself. He was known well in the underground scene before this though for his 'Andre the giant has a posse' poster in 1989. This design was then turned into a stencil and used on stickers, and were stuck all over the world. The image itself has no particular meaning.
And this one, the current and most well known version....
Shepard formed Obey clothing in 2001, which is now a very well known brand, which it appears in recent years has been extensively faked unfortunately.
Shepards work is heavily inspired by wartime propaganda posters, especially it seems from Russia.
Here are some great and classic examples of Fairey's work.....
And the book covers i originally saw that led me to start being interested in him....
Very inspiring stuff, with a very definitive style running through of clean lines and bold colours which i really like. Not sure i'm going to be able to produce something of his caliber, but i'll give it a good go!
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