Shepard Fairey is the American street artist, activist, and graphic designer behind the iconic Obey Giant and Obama "HOPE" designs. He first became active in the early '80s, sharing his artwork on t-shirts and skateboards while still a teenager. While attending the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989, Fairey created his...More
Shepard Fairey is the American street artist, activist, and graphic designer behind the iconic Obey Giant and Obama "HOPE" designs. He first became active in the early '80s, sharing his artwork on t-shirts and skateboards while still a teenager. While attending the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989, Fairey created his first instantly recognizable work: the André the Giant Has a Posse sticker campaign, which later evolved into the Obey Giant. After graduating from RISD, Fairey opened Alternate Graphics, a small printhouse that produced his t-shirt and sticker designs. In the late '90s, Fairey opened guerilla marketing firm BLK/MRKT Inc.; during this time, he designed Mozilla's red dinosaur logo. Fairey launched the OBEY Clothing company in 2001 as a way to bring activism to everyday design. He and his wife Amanda Fairey founded the Studio Number One design agency in 2003. Highlights of their work include the poster for the film Walk the Line, plus album covers for The Smashing Pumpkins (Zeigeist), Led Zeppelin (Mothership), and Flogging Molly (Whiskey on a Sunday).
In 2008, Fairey designed a series of posters in support of the Barack Obama campaign; including the original HOPE design, he also designed versions dedicated to PROGRESS, CHANGE, and VOTE. That year, he also designed Obama's Person of the Year cover of Time magazine. His second Time cover came in 2011, when the magazine commissioned him to design an image dedicated to that year's Person of the Year, "The Protester," inspired by the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and other protest movements around the globe. In 2014, Fairey journeyed to Johannesburg, where he painted a nine-foot-high public art mural of Nelson Mandela. His "We the People" series of posters was released in 2017 as a protest against the inauguration of Donald Trump. Among the many activist organizations Fairey has supported are the ACLU, Chiapas Relief Fund, Feeding America, and the Art of Elysium. OBEY Clothing's Obey Awareness Program has supported causes including pet adoption, Darfur relief, and environmental protection.
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