Shepard Fairey Latest Designer to Team with Saks

By Steve Delahoyde on January 12, 2009 7:01 AM

Fresh off the news that Shepard Fairey was going to see his Barack Obama artwork included in the National Portrait Gallery, he’s struck again by landing a high-profile gig designing catalogs, shopping bags, and other branding material for Saks Fifth Avenue. Continuing their streak of hiring great designers for their branding, like Marian Bantjes and Michael Beirut recently, they’ve handed the keys over to Fairey who has created his usual faux-Soviet era post art style. Personally, while we like the print and catalog work okay, it seems like things we’ve gotten used to with Fairey over these many years. But we really dig the shopping bags, which takes a break from his usual inclusion of people in his work and instead uses a nice mix of type and stripes. Here’s a bit:

The Saks slogan, “Want It!” is printed in lettering similar to the graphic designs of Rodchenko, the Russian graphic designer who was one of the founders of Constructivism. The images, largely realized by Cleon Peterson of Studio Number One, Mr. Fairey’s design company in Los Angeles, depict the season’s trends in black-and-white images with geometric slashes of red, some of them shown on models posing as if they are champions of workers’ rights. An ad for a slouchy bag, for example, tells shoppers to “Arm Yourself,” while a style of relaxed, cropped shorts are described as “Brave Pants.”