New designs for 10/15 - Day of Action

These are the posters I'll have with me today for the #ows Global Day of Action. Will post PDFs soon.

Design #5 - Get money out of politics

This one's simple. A bit of a shout-out to rootstrikers.org. Listen to Larry Lessig, people.

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#4 - We're here. We're Unclear.

OK, I might get some shit for this one, but fuck it. IT'S A JOKE. Seems like about 70% of the folks who saw it laughed, 20% were confused, and 10% shook their heads as if to say, "You're not helping". But three things:

One, I think humor is important. My family always dealt with frustration with humor instead of anger, and it's served me well. Anyone who couldn't make fun of themselves would not last long around my mom.

Second, and more seriously, I actually think the lack of clarity of the demands of the protest is its brilliant secret weapon. Clarity will come.  In the meantime, there's crazy harmony and community down in Zuccotti Park among tons of people who are completely at cross purposes politically—left and right, libertarian and Marxist, the peacenik and the paranoid—but are unified in being pissed off at the right people. The moment the movement becomes about implementing their goals, things get a bit more perilous. The leaderless and improvisational nature of the movement also doesn't give much for the press, who desperately want a narrative, to which to react. Without a foothold, they fill their column inches and air time with something that looks like unintentional debate. It's a brilliant judo move, actually, and I'd encourage #OWS folks to hold off on that list of demands as long as possible, and let the press rack up unforced errors. They find this excruciating.

Third, and certainly not least, Occupy Wall Streeters are actually not that unclear at all.

The reality of what got us here is many, many interwoven things. (This slideshow of charts from Henry Blodget is a tour de force). The longer the conversation goes on about all of those things, the better. Remember, it's not the protestors' job to write the damn legislation. That honor falls to Congress, whom Larry Lessig points out are less popular now than King George was in Revolutionary times. In the meantime, #Occupy. Get used to it. And don't forget to laugh.

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Design #1 (revised) - We are the 99%

No explanation needed on this one, I think. Revised my original design (after field testing it in Zuccotti Park itself). I think it's tighter now. Take it. Use it. CC licensed, so use it for anything except making money.

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My posters found a home at #ows!

After carrying them around all weekend, I left 10 or so of my posters with some folks. When I returned tonight after class, I was happy to see they'd all found homes on the ledge at the southwest corner of Zuccotti Park. Thanks to those that posted 'em!

If anyone out there downloads and uses my posters, please send pics of them in the real world!

A few more poster designs

I'll be posting the supporting links and PDF files for these shortly, but just wanted to share them for now.

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Design #3 - Every cop is one of the 99%

I feel very strongly about this one. I have police officers and military in my family. Police are suffering from the same kinds of broken promises from the financial elites that the rest of us are facing. Walking through Occupy Wall Street, I found myself proudest of holding this one, and it garnered very sympathetic, even emotional reactions from a wide variety of people, despite the intimidatingly large large uniformed police presence surrounding us.

The screenshots of articles are real: New Jersey has laid off massive amounts of officers, and crime has spiked. If you're at the protests, make a point to reach out to these officers, many of whom unofficially have a great deal of sympathy for the cause of making the financial elites sit up and listen.

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Design #2 - Make less than $1.1 mil a year? Congratulations! You're one of the 99%.

Think you're one of the elite who gets to make the decisions? Well, unless you're clearing $1.1M a year, you're down here on earth with the rest of us rabble. 

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Design #1 : We are the 99%

That little green box in the lower right represents the 1% of Americans who control 34.6% of the wealth. The other 99 boxes represent the rest of us. Why is that a problem? Because severe income inequality makes the economy worse. And while most Americans believe we're a pretty egalitarian society (and would like it to be more so), the truth is our income equality sucks, looking more and more like a developing country.

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Joining the ranks of the 99 percent

I visited the Occupy Wall Street protests today and liked what I saw. I am not generally a protesty sort of person, but this particular effort seems directed at the right people for the right reasons. There was an awful lot of good energy, both on Wall Street and in Washington Square. I'm in.

I did, however, see an awful lot of terrible, terrible sign-making skills. With so much economic injustice in this world, so much misdirection and misinformation, there are any number of compelling arguments that actually do fit on a bumper sticker. I've decided to make a few.

I'm a designer. I make things. I like to give things away. I'm going to make some nice designs and post them for anyone to print, by uploading PDFs. I'm also going to make some prints and take them down to the parks myself. Talk to me on Twitter, where I'm @Among99Percent.

I have ideas and tips about communicating through print, Internet and media, which I'll get into when I've had some sleep. In the meantime, here's my first effort at a logo-ish sort of thing, which I created for my Twitter icon. The "We are the 99%" rallying cry of the protesters is a great, simple hook. The American flag below is made of 100 squares. The one little money-green oddball in the lower right represents those who control 34.6% of all of the wealth in America. The red, white and blue squares represent the rest of us.

Let's make this world better.