![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/5\/55\/Barack_Obama_Hope_poster.jpg\/220px-Barack_Obama_Hope_poster.jpg\" "\\"Campaign")
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After reading Lesley Farmer’s article, “I See, I Do: Persuasive Messages and Visual Literacy”, the first thought that popped up in my mind was the use of posters during Obama’s 2008 campaign for presidency.\u00a0 The infamous posters (pictured above) are quite simple: a headshot of Obama looking off into the distance in a somewhat contemplative yet stoic manner.\u00a0 His image itself has been digitized, manipulated to take on the appearance of a comic book character, perhaps even the image of a superhero.\u00a0 The message written underneath his portrait consists of a single word, whether it be “Hope”, “Change” or “Progress”.\u00a0 The message is simple, concise, and creates a bold message, absent of any gimmick or jingle, something that voters often complain about. \u00a0Perhaps what is most interesting about the poster is the use of colour.\u00a0 The contrasting shades of red, white and blue appear, on the surface, as a patriotic tribute to the colours of the American flag.\u00a0 However, I was curious about the persuasiveness of those colours and decided to do some research on the psychology of colour.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, blue evokes a sense of steadfastness, dependability, wisdom and loyalty.\u00a0 It is also a colour most individuals associate with the feeling of calm.\u00a0 Red, as most can attest to, is used to draw attention.\u00a0 It is a colour associated with energy, and evokes a sense of excitement.\u00a0 And finally, white, aside from being associated with cleanliness and purity, has also been associated with safety.<\/p>\n
Whoever was behind Obama’s 2008 campaign appears to have put a lot of thought into this compelling poster. \u00a0As I recall, there was a huge push to get people to vote, as voter turn out was at an all-time low. \u00a0Years after Obama was elected, that image remains burned in my memory.\u00a0 Whether it had persuasive abilities to get voters to not only vote, but to vote for Obama, is something worth exploring.\u00a0 But in the context of this class, the analysis I conducted could be a great exercise for students to critically engage in analyzing political ads to determine what techniques are used to win over voters.<\/p>\n
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PS.\u00a0 After researching further, I discovered that the poster’s creator, Shepard Fairey, is a street artist who works for the skateboard company, OBEY.\u00a0 This adds an interesting dimension to the persuasiveness of the ad, considering the choice of artist may have been a deliberate attempt to reach out to younger voters.\u00a0 Also fascinating is the fact that Fairey illegally used an image of Obama captured by the Associated Press as inspiration for his poster and eventually faced criminal charges!\u00a0 What a crazy turn of events!<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kiran Aujlay<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n Psychology of Colour: <\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.precisionintermedia.com\/color.html<\/p>\n Image of Obama:<\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster<\/p>\n News article about Shepard Fairey:<\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/09\/07\/shepard-fairey-sentenced_n_1864785.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After reading Lesley Farmer’s article, “I See, I Do: Persuasive Messages and Visual Literacy”, the first thought that popped up in my mind was the use of posters during Obama’s 2008 campaign for presidency.\u00a0 The infamous posters (pictured above) are quite simple: a headshot of Obama looking off into the distance in a somewhat contemplative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}