4C
ELECTION 2008
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS ART AND DESIGN CLASS DESIGNED VOTING POSTERS CHECK'EM OUT AIGA | KC Get Out the Vote 2008
Students in Patrick Dooley's Typography III classes participated in the American Institute of Graphic Art's national Get out the Vote campaign. AIGA mounts the campaign in the presidential election year to demonstrate the power of design in the public arena by encouraging designers to contribute to a coordinated get-out-the-vote campaign for national elections in Fall 2008. This builds on the 2004 campaign that placed more than 50,000 AIGA posters in public places in communities across the nation.
The purpose of this campaign is to encourage voter turnout. There is no single message, although the intent is a call to action, motivating people to register and to turn out to vote. The visuals and the text of the message must be nonpartisan – supporting the basic democratic premise of citizen participation, not a partisan position on candidates or issues.
Students in the class researched voting trends in different populations of age, ethnicity and social circumstance and the rationales of why these different sectors tended not to vote. The students then choose a particular target audience to direct their voting message to. A specific approach encouraging voting was then constructed around a particular demographic. Each student developed two posters based on that theme - one that used type only and one that was type + image. Students chose which of the two posters they felt communicated their theme best and those posters are displayed in an AIGA exhibition at the Kansas City, MO Plaza Branch Public Library, throughout the greater Kansas City Metro area, at various businesses and organizations in Lawrence, as well here in the Art & Design Building.
Whitney Morris
Matt Chase
Kelly Anderson
Gina Mengon
Lindsay Tippett
Lauren Ruiz
Stacey Dowgray