Shepard Fairy is one of my favorite artists, hands down. Obey Giant is one the most interesting, widespread street art projects that has come to fruition. It slowly exploded to include a magazine, really expensive clothes, movie posters and a very profitable design company. I am enamored by Fairy's use of propaganda-like imagery to create a body of work that comments on popular culture, government control, big brother, war, money and just about everything else in the modern, contemporary world. Heavy, bold design? Tri-color silk screens? Appropriating Soviet Union communist propaganda? Punk rock? Hip Hop? Squish them all together? That's genius.
I also love it's ever-present, omnipotent original Andre the Giant logo and strange ambiguity of the images that have been created under the Giant campaign.
It's only appropriate that he did the redesign of 1984 by George Orwell, as well as the one for Animal Farm. Maybe this time, since it's got a really well-designed cover by one of my favorite working artists, I'll actually read them. Read the post about redesigning book covers for classics at The Penguin Blog, read the whole story of Obey Giant in Supply & Demand and get excited for E Pluribus Venom which gets released at the end of July.
