Valerie Pettis has just been selected as a winner of Poster for Tomorrow’s international competition advocating the abolition of the Death Penalty. Her poster, entitled “Legal Murder Is Not Justice,” was chosen from among 2094 entries submitted by designers worldwide as one of the ten most outstanding (the highest category of the competition). Pettis’s stark, black and white design replaces the Greco-Roman columns of a hall of justice with coffins.
Poster for Tomorrow is an organization that promotes activism through socially relevant design and is currently touring both the top ten and top one hundred posters in thirty-five venues across the globe.
However, the posters have sparked controversy and of the roughly one hundred countries originally scheduled to participate many have now declined. Clandestine exhibitions were mounted in many of these places, including Syria, China, Malaysia and Iran where promoters were beaten and jailed. Except for a single gallery in Los Angeles, major organizations headquartered in the United States, fearing controversy, have also withdrawn.
Images of the one hundred posters, and a list of exhibitions, can be found at www.PosterforTomorrow.org.
