CHAPTER 1:
The year is 1988. You are an 18 year-old art student at Rhode Island School of Design. You are a big time skateboarder and a punk music fanatic. You were born in middle class, conservative Charleston, SC to a cheerleader and the captain of the high school football team. Your rebellious spirit has guided you thus far and now you’re making your way through the world guided by your own choices, far from home. You work at the local skate shop selling boards and shirts, often ones that you hand-stencil and sell under the table when the boss isn’t around. You are captain of the skate team, which makes you king of the skater hill in Providence. You make all your own t-shirts and your sneakers are always hand-painted, getting you a lot of attention from other kids. One night, a friend comes over to your house and asks you to show him how to cut a stencil. You say “sure” and start flipping through the local newspaper. You find an image of human giant André Roussimoff, a 7’4”, 500lb wrestler and B-list celebrity, and suggest this for your homie’s stencil. Him, being a fickle fan of only the ultra-cool, says, “No way! That dude is stupid!” What do you do?
If you change your tune and agree with him, turn to chapter 2.
If you get inspired by his close-mindedness and say “No way man, you just don’t know! André is the shit. We’re gonna start a posse and everyone is gonna want to be down,” then turn to chapter 3.
CHAPTER 2:
Tail between your legs, you back down and find an image of the Sex Pistols logo for him. He learns how to cut the stencil and starts making his own shirts. He starts his own line of shirts and you are no longer the only kid in town with stenciled clothes. You both go on to day jobs as stock designers for a large skateboarding apparel company. You die.
CHAPTER 3:
Inspired by the kid’s lack of adventurous spirit, you make him feel like he’s out of the loop on something. You cut the stencil, spray it on some paper, scrawl a mysterious ‘Andre the Giant has a posse’ next to the image and take it out to the local Kinko’s where you run off a ton of paper stickers. You put these up all over the city and watch as people start to react to the campaign. Some think it’s a band, others think it’s a secret society, others don’t want to admit to being in the dark and make up their own myth about it. This intrigues you, so you take the experiment further. Broke art student that you are, you’re very resourceful, so you figure out how to rig the copy machines at Kinko’s to give you free red and black copies. You start running four machines at a time, all night long, leaving in the morning with more stickers than you can carry. That original friend is long gone, leaving you a lone warrior. You put these up all by yourself and watch as the stickers gain popularity and momentum within the local culture. Your little experiment has started to intrigue you in a more serious way and you decide to take it to other cities.
People’s outrageous reactions, coupled with your long-standing interest in propaganda art, inspire you to simplify the image and create a real campaign of sorts. Mixing all of your counter-cultural influences into your experiment, you draw on the work of one of your favorite artists, Barbara Krueger, and drop a red rectangle on the bottom of a simplified version of the André image. Inside the rectangle you put the word ‘Obey’, borrowed from a cheesy film you saw called ‘They Live’. Using the Kinko’s scam and screen-printing skills you picked up at art school, you produce larger posters and thousands of stickers promoting André’s mysterious posse. The Rhorschach test-like response the project gets balloons with its multi-city growth, and it is even starting to spawn its own bootlegs. You create a manifesto for the project. Although it’s fun, André’s posse isn’t bringing home the bacon. When it comes times to graduate from RISD and you are faced with the myriad opportunities of an art student, André’s head goes on the chopping block in exchange for a busy professional life. What do you do?
If you responsibly shrug off your juvenile project and decide to throw yourself into looking for any design position that will support your dreams of having a family, turn to chapter 4.
If you decide that this experiment is one of the most interesting things you’ve ever started and the social implications of its results are far too important to let go of, turn to chapter 5.
CHAPTER 4:
Life in the fast lane is good for a while. You score a high-paying job designing campaign paraphernalia for presidential candidate Ross Perot. You eventually get fired when it comes to light that you made and put up a sticker around the office showing Mr. Perot, Dumbo, and a bloodhound dog that says ‘Perot’s ears have a posse’ (you couldn’t resist). You are blacklisted as a graphic designer. You die.
CHAPTER 5:
Although you do want to be successful, you decide to take the more guerrilla route. In your junior year you started a little screen printing business and post-graduation, you make this your full-time gig, printing and selling t-shirts. Over the next couple of years you move to California and eventually, already $30,000 in debt, start your own design firm with your friends Dave Kinsey and Andy Howell. Simultaneously, an urban culture/art magazine runs an article on the Obey Giant campaign and people start buying your posters.
Instead of taking a traditional approach to marketing your company, you do it your way: You and the boys call yourselves the FBI (First Bureau of Imagery). You go out in grey suits and aviators and take pictures as ‘agents’, then create a printed ‘file’ and send it out directly to the companies you want to work for. Jackpot! You score work from Netscape, Pepsi, and other ‘evil’ corporations. They immediately tap your company (a trio of skateboarders) to create marketing propaganda for extreme sports products and the X-games audience. People start asking questions, like ‘Why are you selling your work to these companies? Aren’t you paid? You’re up everywhere!’ You feel your street cred start to slip. What do you do?
