While the UK may be somewhat preoccupied by the snap general election that is taking place on July 4, the European Parliament has its own elections coming up, on June 6-9.

To raise awareness and encourage people to vote, the artist Wolfgang Tillmans has collaborated with designer Scott King to create a series of images that can be downloaded for use as posters or T-shirt designs. Tillmans’ intention is to encourage voters to “become active in keeping Europe a democratic and open place”.

“Today, more than ever in the EU’s history, forces are growing that want to dismantle the European project, forces that want to splinter European countries into nationalistic units,” he continues. “We must not allow this to happen.”

Tillmans approached King to create the designs, asking for something “playful”. “He cited Allen Ruppersberg as a reference,” says King. “As soon as he mentioned Ruppersberg, or more accurately ‘what might Allen Ruppersberg do today?’; I knew what to do … or I thought I did. I spent two or three days making these sort of ‘digital letterpress’ posters … they looked OK, but the whole process was contrived.

“Wolfgang didn’t like them at all! And as a last-ditch attempt to rescue myself, I showed him something else I’d tried out … these huge letters, done as ‘drop caps’ on white backgrounds. I’d used lots of ‘ugly’, unloved and cheap or free fonts that most designers ignore: the fonts selected almost at random as ‘typographic debris’.

“My thinking was that it’d be great if these huge and strange looking letters appeared as posters on the streets – they’d make no sense, but you’d be drawn in to read the copy at the bottom,” King continues. “Anyway Wolfgang loved these, the ‘lightness’ of them, the play with language, the boldness … so this is what we did. Tom Etherington then got involved and refined them, he made everything just tight enough to work.”

King admits the posters are quite abstract for a political campaign, though this is in keeping with Tillmans’ previous work in this area. In 2016, he released a series of images in the run up to the EU referendum in the UK, each featuring a passionate declaration of why it was better for the UK to stay in the EU.

Closer to artworks than typical activism, the posters stood out due to their difference (even if their messaging was ultimately unsuccessful back in 2016), and the hope is that this new campaign will cut through for similar reasons. “We were looking for a sort of ‘ugly beautiful’, a ‘friendly urgency’ – and it was Wolfgang who spotted the potential in these designs that, I think, most people would have dismissed as ‘not real posters’ or ‘too hard to read’,” says King.

All the artworks can be downloaded from votetogether.eu.

Credits:
Art/Design: Wolfgang Tillmans and Scott King; @wolfgang_tillmans; @scottkingstudio
Design: Tom Etheringon; @_tometherington
Animation: Paul Plow; @paulplow