Amplifier is a Seattle design lab that commissions free, open-source art with social messages, available to download. For Inauguration Day in 2017, the lab shared symbols of hope with the now-iconic “We The People” campaign, a collection of portraits highlighting people of color. “It was built on a hack,” explains executive director Cleo Barnett. “With posters banned from parts of Washington, D.C., we bought full-size, full-color ads in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today so that the message could be rolled up, carried across the barricades, and unfurled on the other side. It became our biggest campaign yet.”
The group is now tackling “symbols that help promote mental health, well-being, and social change during these stressful times,” according to Barnett. Artists from 50 countries submitted more than 8,000 works in 20 languages. A selection has been printed and pasted all over the city. Sandin Medjedovic’s image of a doctor as Atlas—bearing the weight of the world—hangs 16 feet high in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.
Throughout the week of May 18, the group plans to roll out five blocks of imagery on boarded-up businesses downtown. It will be Amplifier’s largest public art project to date. The campaign features more than 20 creatives, among them locals like Akira Ohiso, Stat Phillips, and Eileen Jimenez. “We’re putting messages into the world that will save people’s lives,” Barnett says. “And we’ve also put over $80,000 into the hands of artists so far.”