Help Spread The Word
I have created some bumper decals (sticker and magnet) and a tee-shirt to spread the word about the 2024 presidential election:
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If you’d like to help spread the message, you can buy one at Zazzle. I get 5% of the cost of the items, which is the minimum amount that Zazzle allows. If you get a magnet, maybe check your car with a kitchen magnet first: the bumpers on my Nissan Leaf are made of plastic so don’t work with a magnetic decal…
The Message
You can buy other pro-Biden or anti-Trump stickers and tee shirts on Zazzle and elsewhere – and I encourage you to do so if mine don’t grab you. I wanted to make my own in order to emphasize what I think should be the key message of this campaign: vote Biden to defend democracy against the other guy who used a mob attack on Congress to overturn an election.
Of course, that is hard to fit on a bumper sticker. My original thought was to use the slogan “Defend Democracy” and I may add variants that include it. “Keep America Sane” has a better rhythm, is a riff on Trump’s MAGA slogan and maybe strikes home on a more basic level. On the other hand, it is kind of generic, since candidates often characterize the other side as nuts. But I think it’s much better than the other one that came up when I searched Zazzle just now: Make America Care. Care about what? Does America not care now? Don’t many Trump fanatics care too much?
The other sticker focuses on the January 6 attack. “I like presidents who DONT attack the Capitol” is a riff on Trump’s infamous quote dissing John McCain, “I like people who weren’t captured”. The primary audience (people who haven’t already made up their mind) probably won’t get the allusion, but that’s okay. That phrasing also appeals to me because it has a light touch, sort of along the lines of “I’d prefer if my daughter didnt marry a serial killer.”
The stickers work best when together – I have both on the back of my car.
Similarly, the tee shirt contains both messages: the words call to elect Biden to keep America sane, while the image shows Biden standing between the Capitol (American democracy) and Trump and his violent mob trying to tear it down.
The Graphic
I’m not an artist, so if anyone can create an image that conveys the message better, I’d love to see it and help turn it into objects.
The stickers and shirt are all designed to be visible from about 15-20 feet. Graphics were created in… wait for it… Powerpoint. I drew the people, Capitol dome, etc., by using the “insert shape” command to draw a bunch of colored polygons. There’s probably a better way but I’m used to Powerpoint for work and it actually is not too slow and gives a fair amount of control plus the ability to quickly copy/transform shapes and images. I figured out that it was best to create several layers separately (Capitol, Biden, mob) and then combine so I could edit individual elements without having to redo everything.
Biden’s head went through several iterations. I eventually gave up on just using Powerpoint and also used Matlab to do some image processing on a photo to get something I thought was good enough.
I thought the biggest challenge for the shirt was to make an image that would be instantly recognizable to someone walking by me on the street. The mob needed to convey (a) violence (b) numbers (c) malevolence and (d) January 6. Haven’t tested it with any random people, though a cashier at the grocery store reacted positively to it. Trump (seen from behind) is kind of lost in the crowd – I debated making him bigger but decided against. The perspective of course is all wrong – Biden dwarfs the people standing in front of him – but I thought that worked better conceptually.
For the “I like presidents…” bumper sticker, I tried to include images that reminded people of January 6 while not making the text hard to read. Currently I think the images do not hurt viewing the text from a distance but are not really visible except for someone walking close to the car in a parking lot – which may be the main place people see this anyway.
Most of these products are invisible if you try to search in Zazzle. You have to go to the link above for my store, zazzle.com/store/keep_america_sane.