shepard fairey designed a very, very cool obama poster. we all know this. it’s a very, very cool poster because fairey took obama’s image, simplified it down to clean lines and areas, and converted it into a four color palette: dark blue for blacks and deep shadows, red for medium shadows, light blue for midtones, and white for highlights. he also uses a light blue line process for tones between mid- and highlight.

it works because of the simplicity of the underlying image. it isn’t a photo of obama, it’s an illustration of his face.

fairey was able to do this because he is a visual artist, has spent years working on translating complex images into simple icons, has studied illustration, and has a ton of natural talent. i say this because it’s true, not just because i lived in providence when he launched andre the giant has a posse, or because i drove by an enormous obey giant image on canal road every day for more than a year.

now there’s a website created by paste magazine which purports to take any image you submit and “obamicon” it – change it to a four-color image in the fairey style. and while you do get a four-color image spat out at you, that’s about the only thing it shares with the original obama poster.

most of the images submitted are far too complex to take the obamicon treatment well. this results in noisy, jarring compositions that are difficult, if not impossible, to decipher. (take, for example, this image created by beyonddc. what is it? melting ice cubes? barely-legible words? this image is somewhat better – but only if you’re familiar with the interior of a dc metro station.) people across the web seem to think they can make their faces as powerful as obama’s – but they lack the pose, the composition, and yes, the simplicity.

the original fairey obama image is an icon. “a sign or representation that stands for its object by virtue of a resemblance or analogy to it.” it’s not a direct photo translation. and that’s why it works, while your “obamicon”-ed images don’t.

so stop it, please. all you obamicon junkies – you’re making teh interwebs a jarring, fugly place.