The campaign aimed to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump and defeat Republicans who left behind pragmatic, conservative principles for the far-right, nationalist and populist ideology known as Trumpism. End the Error created political art that could be downloaded, altered and/or reshared for free. Once the campaign was launched, the public was invited to submit art of their own and share through multiple social channels.

Utilizing a library of historic political iconography, End the Error aimed to provoke and associate feelings of alarm and fear with one camp and hope and aspiration with the other.

The name, End the Error, suggests an error had been made in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump as president after losing the popular vote by 2.8 million votes. Donald Trump was the fifth president in U.S. history to win an election while losing the popular vote – yet his was the largest margin of those. Donald Trump’s electoral victory was convincing, however he saw very narrow victory in three states whose combined electoral votes could have prevented him from becoming president – Wisconsin (0.8 percent), Pennsylvania (0.7 percent), and Michigan (0.2 percent).

The typography chosen, Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed, references the work of Silence = Death by William Olander and the Gran Fury collective. This graphic was one of many created by Gran Fury in response to the lack of both awareness and government action regarding the AIDS pandemic. The work emphasizes the consequences of silence – poignant when paralleled with the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects inaction or lack of exercising one’s political voice could have.

Base colors chosen for provocative works in the campaign reference anti-fascist art of the 1930s. While colors chosen for aspiration works reference promotional political art of the same Depression-era period. This allusion ties together the agenda of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal with Joe Biden’s Build Back Better campaign – both investing in Democratic themes such as affordable housing, workers’ rights, unionization, infrastructure, the promotion of the common good and building back trust in American institutions.

It was important to build a flexible campaign to be distributed or shared across as many channels as possible. Posters were created for print and made available for download. The art was adapted to screen for social media sharing, device wallpapers, and available to be customized.

It an excellent opportunity to lead this project from vision to end. Not only was I able to follow my passion in civic engagement – while producing thought-provoking art – the project was a huge success. End the Error exceeded all targets across multiple channels, both print and digital.

You can view an archive of the website here: End the Error, archived.