Hope

Why it works

The defining image of the 2008 US election was not made by the campaign. Street artist Shepard Fairey illustrated Barack Obama from a news photograph in early 2008, face split into red and blue, eyes raised to the horizon, first captioned "Progress" and then "Hope". He sold some screen prints to pay for thousands more, pasted them on the street and offered a free download, and supporters did the rest. Because the image was partly spread by fly-posting, the campaign never officially adopted it, but Obama wrote to thank him, the campaign asked him for authorised versions, and the National Portrait Gallery says it sold 50,000 official posters. It is studied as a case of grassroots, open-source distribution outrunning a paid media plan, and of a graphic style becoming a political brand in its own right, endlessly parodied and imitated. Fairey's original collage entered the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in time for the inauguration.