Obama Designs
Various posters

In October of 2008, I decided to forego pay for a month and take a leave from my job to work on the Obama campaign.  I had originally planned to canvass for the month, with the goal of knocking one thousand doors, a goal which I did in fact reach.  However once I was involved in the campaign on a daily basis, I found myself in charge of organizing events at Duke and helping to motivate the students vote at an early voting location on campus.  Putting my design skills to use, one of my self-initiated projects was creating two massive typographic posters encouraging students to vote early.  One was placed in the Bryan Center, a high-traffic area for students, and the other was placed down the hall from the early voting location itself (the photo below is taken from where the voting line queues up).  I also organized and created numerous palm fliers and small posters announcing various surrogate appearances on campus (cast of The Wire, Edie Falco of the Sopranos, Ashley Judd, and others).  Finally, on the night of the victory, I created the below poster as a way to try to express the excitement and exhilaration felt on election night.  I submitted the design to a website called Design For Obama (DFO) and was surprised when, months later, I received an email asking if I’d like to include the poster in an upcoming book featuring the art that was inspired by Obama’s historic run.  The book will be published this fall by DFO creator Aaron Perry-Zucker and filmmaker Spike Lee for TASCHEN books.