GRD3200 Blog

So, I'm pretty sure EVERYONE has seen this at some place or another in Atlanta, or any other city really...More than likely on a telephone pole, street light, or another random place. I finally sat down to find out why I see Andre the Giant staring at me on a fairly regular basis, and I found it to be pretty interesting and worth checking out:

From the OBEY GIANT website (www.obeygiant.com)
"The Obey campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. The first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment. The Obey campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer's perception and attention to detail. THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE."

Wikipedia:
Andre the Giant Has a Posse is a street art campaign based on a design by Frank Shepard Fairey created in 1986 in Charleston, South Carolina. Distributed by the skater community, the Andre stickers began showing up in nearly every big city across the U.S.A. Later, when Fairey was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he released his manifesto. At the time Fairey declared the campaign to be "an experiment in phenomenology." Over time the artwork has been reused in a number of ways and has become a world-wide movement, following in the footsteps of Ivan Stang's Church of the SubGenius and populist World War II icon "Kilroy Was Here". At the same time, Fairey's work has evolved stylistically and semantically into the OBEY Giant campaign.

I'd say it's been a pretty successful campaign. Now everytime I see an OBEY sticker, I'll be smiling a little.