Exposing the state through the empirical evidence of it. Please feel free to make your own and try to keep it looking attractive! I recommend using pixlr.com!

WW1

VIETNAM WAR

NUCLEAR WARFARE
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This Is Government [image campaign]
Exposing the state through the empirical evidence of it. Please feel free to make your own and try to keep it looking attractive! I recommend using pixlr.com!
WW1
VIETNAM WAR
NUCLEAR WARFARE
Fantastic idea!
I’m going to make some later tonight. If you use a photo with dimensions of 851×315, you can use them as a facebook cover image.
Wow, excellent execution of the idea too. How artistic and on point. A simple, brief message right then and there. Make sure you are mindful of what images you use, we need to always include something directly caused by government, otherwise it becomes appeal to emotion.
You have to upload the images somewhere else then paste the url into the source text box after clicking the ‘insert/edit image’ when writing a post.
You can use a third party image host like bay img or tiny pic or you can use liberty.me if you have a publishing site:
YOURSITENAMEHERE.liberty.me/wp-admin/upload.php
Wow. I like this. Have you guys considered making it just one font for every image? With the “This Is Government” in the middle everytime? Sort of memify your own image series? It would look pretty streamlined and rather professional actually if you used that awesome font and placement on each image instead of changing the font. This is really, really catchy.
Glad you like it. Yes, we’d like to develop a set style for it. We are currently using one font but have been varying the placement and size depending on the picture. (The only exception in font is the one by Jack above because we never gave him the font). Maybe we’ll redo those in same font later.
The font we are using is Communist, available at http://www.dafont.com/communist.font . (COMMUNIS.TTF). I’m out of free time this week, but am thinking of making a little page that works like memegenerator.com so that images can be quickly made in the same style in the browser without having to load up photoshop or gimp.
So awesome. This is super neat. I would love to see this develop. I will gladly share it one of these on my pages when you guys are ready. Cool stuff!
Marketing ideas is much like marketing products. You begin by figuring out who the target audience is. For this project, it seems the target audience is people who see the government (in a ‘perception is reality’ sense) as not only very real, but mostly a benevolent force driven by good intentions. This image campaign does a wonderful job of upending that perception.
It would be thrilling to see a sister campaign which illustrates the amazing wonders of the marketplace, free exchange, cooperation, entrepreneurship, spontaneous order, etc. My suggestion: This is Liberty
Thanks for this post. I had a lengthy 6 paragraph reply that tried to capture what you said in a few sentences. As for a sister campaign, we bought another domain the same day and will launch another little tumblr site that offers an answer to the inevitable question: “what is better than government?”. It will be a lot more positive and uplifting, for sure. :]
Conza, my understanding is the benevolence of the market aspect is coming in the sister campaign. Josh?
There are many paths to persuasion. Some people are moved more by philosophical and reason-based appeals. Others are moved more by emotional appeals. This particular campaign I think is squarely in the emotional appeal camp, much like mainstream advertising campaigns which use Pavlovian pairing to create positive and negative emotional associations. Companies do it because it’s highly effective.
That said, it would be so great to see campaigns that are more philosophically driven too.
Awesome Josh, looking forward to seeing it.
Suggestion for This is Government:
Would not have known those were American children if it weren’t for the American flag in the back.
I assumed they were Hitler youth or something
Yeah, I believe they changed the hand position of the pledge of allegiance due to the Nazi’s having the same salute!
Here’sare some more I’ve made. Decided this would make for an appropriate Twitter campaign.
Seattle, 1999.
American Army – Iraq, 2004.
Armenian Genocide
Bosnian Genocide
Haymaker Affair, Chicago, 1886
America, 1944. Korematsu v. US
America, 1950s.
Syria, 2013
Trail of Tears
Rick, it would be awesome if you could post a zip of the pre-font pics if you don’t mind!
I get the whole “government does not exist” argument, but using it in conversations with statists has only proven to confuse and frustrate. They usually respond with “Sure, it does; it helps the poor and maintains the roads!” and the exchange suffers and/or dissipates. In my experience, focusing on the inherent inefficiencies of government works much better to bridge the gap, as does explaining the Non-Aggression Principle, though perhaps I’m just not wording the aforementioned argument correctly?
So, this is people acting like government? Doesn’t have quite the same ring.