A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a call for posters by Posters for the Planet. This initiative, created by the Turing foundation (a charitable organisation) asked illustrators, photographers, graphic designers and other makers to create a poster. This poster needed a clear and positive call to action to the people, with inspiration on how to change their behaviour in favour of the environment. 1462 posters were submitted to their website. Below is my submission.
In addition to an active participation in the climate movement, the winner will receive €10.000,-, a national media campaign ánd their poster will hang in a selection of the most important museums of the Netherlands. Not a bad prize, and for upcoming artist this could mean a big stepping stone in their career.
Unfortunately, next to some amazing creative submissions, this call attracted lots of posters made with AI, stolen artwork or posters with bad grammar mistakes. On August 22 2024, I already contacted the jury about a submission that basically was a traced poster of an artwork by illustrator Hollie Fuller. The submitted poster was retracted, or disqualified, or at least removed from the website.
Not something the organisation had a lot of control over, but it was all the more disappointing that they chose to ignore emerging artists and included (lots of!) posters that used AI for the longlist. Especially when you think AI costs an insane amount of energy to create one image, something that would surely go against their own campaign about sustainability and climate control. Other criteria, such as the want for a positive tone and the need to get people motivated to change their own behaviour with their poster, was also hugely ignored. Their longlist received 83 angry and confused comments on their Instagram post. It's still a matter of subjective, of course, so please judge for yourself.
For me, I'm not disappointed my submission was not included in the longlist. With so many strong participants, I already anticipated my changes very small. However, I am disappointed to 'lose' from an AI poster with grammar mistakes. I feel a lot of (young, emerging) artist got overlooked for their talent. This is why I wanted to celebrate them and why I'm writing this blogpost to show you my personal favourites. Hover over the artwork to see their names.
This is only a selection of my personal favourites. I'm an illustrator, so my eye draws naturally towards illustrative posters. There are, however, many more excellent posters made that didn't make the longlist or this blog. Visit https://postersfortheplanet.org/inzendingen/ to see 73 pages of the work of others and consider hiring an illustrator, graphic designer, photographer or artist for your next project.
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