Tony Puryear

One thing I learned from making this poster: you couldn’t ask for a better design client than Hillary Clinton.

In 2007, I was asked to make something colorful for the New York Senator, something to answer the famous Obama “Hope/Change” posters by LA designer Shepard Fairey. Working from a terrific photo by Canadian rocker Bryan Adams, I created this design. The sun-rays and 1930s sans serif font were meant to invoke a timeless, American feel (I copped the look of the sun rays off an old peach crate.) Truth to tell, the design also flirted in what I hoped was a tongue-in-cheek way with a kind of iconography I associated with the poster for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita.” I didn’t know how this humorous allusion would be received. The Democratic Party was notoriously unhip in their design choices. There was, in fact, some controversy after the poster was distributed. Some said it looked like something Chairman Mao would have made. Some found the sun rays reminiscent of Imperial Japan’s “Rising Sun” battle flag.

In any event, the one person whose opinion mattered was the one running for president. I’ll never forget her words to me when I saw her after she had seen the poster for the first time: “You made me look like Evita Peron,” she said. Ulp. “I love it!” she added, laughing that big laugh of hers.

This poster is in the permanent collection of The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.