Grassroots
Back in 2010, a group on reddit.com were trying to convince Stephen Colbert to host a rally in Washington D.C. in response to other political pundit rallies that were being held. Independently of this group, Colbert and Jon Stewart had already set in motion the events that would lead to the mock rally that October.
In support of the group on reddit, I started goofing off in Illustrator making little poster ideas and posting them for the group. Ultimately, the group managed to raise more than $500k for DonorsChoose.org - a charity where Colbert sits on the board.
My original portrait illustration.
Originally, it was thought that Stephen Colbert would be hosting his own independent Rally, this was the original poster for that and was featured on ColbertRally.com before the official announcements, the pairing with Jon Stewart, and the launch of the official websites.
When Colbert and Stewart joined forces, they were playing on the idea of the clash between 'Sanity' - Stewart's rational approach to political discourse - and 'Fear' - the terror laden rhetoric of faux-pundit Colbert. Since the planned venue at the time was the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I played off the idea of have a 'Duality of Lincoln' in which his face showed both the calm sanity and fearful panic themes for the rally.
This was the simplistic version of the poster made without any living person's likeness.
When the two of them paired up for a single rally, I decided I should try to shoehorn Jon Stewart's face onto my original poster somehow.
This was the final version of the poster that I put together. There are some elements of it I really liked and others (Stewart's face? hair?) that could've easily been improved. I printed a handful of these posters and took them with me to the rally to hand out as a kind of commemorative item for people I met up with.
These two British women managed to find the image online and have T-Shirts made. The shirts were even more unauthorized than my posters, so I made the criminals pose for a photo.
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