Gallery: Green Patriot Posters Reinvigorate Environmental Message
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Green Patriot Posters is an arty hangover cure for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that has become a national spasm of hyperconsumption. Thumbing through the book's ecology-themed imagery, created by multimediators like [Shepard Fairey](http://obeygiant.com) and [DJ Spooky](http://www.djspooky.com), won't stab you in the gut with dogma — but it could tickle your conscience. "Co-editor Dmitri Siegel and I started [Green Patriot Posters](http://www.greenpatriotposters.org) because we felt the sustainability movement needs better images and messages to connect with people," co-editor Edward Morris told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "It needs more positivity and urgency, and a better connection to values that aren't simply about nature and conservation, which not everybody cares about, but also jobs and a better future." The visual meditations on sustainability and overload evoke [World War II–era posters](http://www.greenpatriotposters.org/inspire.php) that inspired the campaign. The posters can be torn out of the book and plastered somewhere useful. Click through the [Green Patriot Posters](http://www.artbook.com/9781935202240.html) gallery above for a taste of the book's alternately critical and cute graphics, along with comments from contributing artists. "America is the child of the [Enlightenment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment)," Morris said. "[Climate change](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/tag/climate-change/) is the ultimate challenge to that rationality. The risk of increased conflict, refugees, famine and economic failure are not debatable. Whatever country figures out newer, cheaper, safer forms of energy is the new economic superpower." Do Green Patriot Posters' well-meaning media and urgent messages wake hearts and minds ready for a War on Terra? Fly your freak flag in the comments section below.
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*Power Up Windmill* ------------------- __by Shepard Fairey__ "I believe very strongly that green energy is the only way for the United States to achieve energy independence, create valuable technology and protect the environment," Fairey said about this 2009 design for MoveOn.org. "I created this windmill image as a patriotic symbol of the green-energy mission."
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*Manifesto for a People's Republic of Antarctica* ------------------------------------------------- __by DJ Spooky__ "Antarctica has many faces," said Paul "DJ Spooky" Miller, who journeyed to Antarctica in 2007 and 2008 to shoot the multimedia meditation [Terra Nova: Antarctica Sinfonia](http://www.djspooky.com/art/terra_nova.php). "It's usually thought of as a huge pile of ice that somehow stays afloat at the bottom of the world. In different ages, before humanity had mapped out the world, it would have simply been beyond most maps and most ideas about what made up the geography of the world. Today, Antarctica persists as a symbol of the unknown, and possesses great symbolic strength."
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*Keep Buying Shit* ------------------ __by Diego Gutiérrez__ "To a graphic designer, there is no better reason to design than for a good cause," said Diego Gutiérrez. "At the same time, popular media and kitsch design have exhausted a cause like global warming. Since Al Gore's [An Inconvenient Truth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth) came out, it has become popular for commercial design to take green to the masses. Although for a good cause, these sorts of commercial iterations are still very often designed with fluff for fluffy brains — there is no true statement of the urgency with which we must act to keep our lifestyle or even the world as we know it."
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*Sow* ----- __by Ben Barnes__ "'Sow Cultivate Thrive' is a poster series developed around the concept of the [victory garden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden) posters of World War II, with a modern interpretation," said Ben Barnes. "Stylistically I wanted them to have an American militaristic feel, with the idea of taking action to plant a garden."
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*Problem Me, Solution Me* ------------------------- __by Steve Le__ "For a problem that was caused by us, we have the ability to clean up our mess and solve global warming," said Steve Le. "It is our world: We should treat it with the utmost care."
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*Join the Revolution* --------------------- __by Adam Gray__ "Both the bike and the heart icon seem to have currency at the moment," said *Green Patriot Posters* editor Edward Morris. "\[Adam\] Gray combined both in this design, which evokes a peaceful sort of revolutionary vigor."
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*Simplicity Is the Key to Successful Living* -------------------------------------------- __by Nick Dewar__ "I hope that America is entering a post–'[greed is good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed_is_good)' period," said illustrator [Nick Dewar](http://www.nickdewar.com) of his design, which first appeared in ReadyMade magazine in 2009. "I can't think of a single step that would change the nature of our society more than everyone abandoning their automobiles and cycling instead. There would be less dependence on oil, obesity levels would drop dramatically, and reflective bike clips would replace fancy ladies' purses as the current must-have fashion accessory."
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*Dead End* ---------- __by Noel Douglas__ "*Dead End* is part of a body of work made for the street protests during the [2009 G20 Summit in London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_G-20_London_Summit), Copenhagen during [COP15](http://www.denmark.dk/en/menu/Climate-Energy/COP15-Copenhagen-2009/cop15.htm) and Bolivia during the [People's Summit](http://pwccc.wordpress.com/)," said Noel Douglas. "Graphic communication can foreground the contradictions of capitalism, or open windows onto new worlds. But they must serve human and not commercial needs."
