Poster design by chargefield highlights the theme of a short film on the 2020 US elections

By John Godfrey RGD, Creative Director at Chargefield

Context

In the short film Anyone For President (a title posed as both a question and a plea for help during the 2020 presidential campaign), 12 fictional candidates lay out their presidential pledges, in a manner franker than we're used to. With none of the candidates being desirable, the film encourages the audience to reflect upon the election at the time and how all the film's candidates may be a better alternative to 2020's incumbent president. While the film entered the festival circuit in 2020, it was just recently released to the public; the poster was commissioned in 2022.

Methodology

The poster demonstrates the themes of the film by introducing a new political party symbol to join the elephant (Republican) and donkey (Democratic) party symbols: the ostrich. Infamous for its lack of intelligence, the ostrich paints the picture of truly any candidate being considered. It's clumsy footing on the stripes of the American flag (beginning a domino effect) represents the great power held by the office of the president and the dangerous repercussions of that power not being handled responsibly.

In the original sketch that was approved for the poster, the ostrich could be seen burying its head in the sand, which I thought worked great thematically with the film. After a bit of research, I discovered that ostriches don't actually bury their heads in the sand and while it may have been a good idea with a fully detailed ostrich, when reducing the ostrich to a two colour political party symbol, having its head in the sand eliminated recognition of the animal. While designing the poster, I came across the domino solution which I feel was more effective in the long run.

Result

The poster design was well received by the director, who enjoyed the faux campaign poster motif so much that he expanded the scope of the project to include re-doing the film's titles in the same visual style as the poster.

Watch a video showing the end titles with the faux campaign poster motif here.

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