Frank Shepard Fairey, a well known graphic designer, created the OBEY campaign. The main image of this campaign is a simplified image of Andre the Giant’s face. This basic graphic appeared from Fairey’s initial design “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”, which has more text, is more detailed, and originated in 1989. During this time, Shepard Fairey was attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, RI. That summer, Fairey offered to help a friend with stenciling. After finding an advertisement for wrestling with Andre the Giant, Fairey suggested to his fellow student that he should stencil the large man. When the friend rejected Fairey’s idea, Fairey decided to attempt it himself. What resulted was an “experiment in phenomenology”, according to Fairey. He, along with friends Ryan Lesser, Blaize Blouin, Alfred Hawkins, and Mike Mongo, had put the image on vinyl or paper stickers and posted them around town. The stickers that poked fun at the word posse (inspired by the group who created the image) and hip hop subculture was almost instantly a success. But in 1994, Fairey was threatened with a law suit by Titan Sports, Inc. for using the title “Andre the Giant”, which was trademarked by them. Because of this law suit, Fairey changed the image somewhat, removing all text and then added the slogan “OBEY” which came from a film entitled “They Live”. The OBEY campaign was ironically against authority and the sheep-like following of consumers, and has been a highly regarded example of clever, conceptual graphic design.
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