Behind the Candidates was a website created for the 2008 presidential election. It was conceived to answer a simple question: who will be advising our next president?

In an ideal world, the advisors of a candidate running for office warrant as much scrutiny as the candidate themselves–they are the ones shaping policy, they are the voice of authority a president will rely on to steer them in the right direction.

With this as our compass, Ian Boyle and I researched over 60 top advisors from the McCain and Obama campaigns and assembled an interactive dossier for each person–including several descriptive quotes (or direct quotes from them), their biographical information and past positions, and links to interviews or speeches. The advisors were organized by category–each advisor is arranged side-by-side with their counterpart and introduced with one compelling quote–one click further reveals the full profile with links to all original sources. Viewers can sift through hundreds of links to articles and video clips for an in-depth look at the makeup of each campaign, or simply scroll through for a quick composite of each advisor.

By election day we had visitors from nearly 100 different countries (and all 50 states). After the election, many of President Obama’s key advisors who went on to high-profile positions were originally profiled on our site.

behindthecandidates.com

Co-creator: Ian Boyle

Awards/Recognition: Communication Arts, Poynter Institute for Journalism, Art Director’s Club, Good Magazine, Creative Review, I.D. Magazine

Bush Bash is a campaign that encouraged people across the nation to host their own parties on January 19th, 2009—George W. Bush’s last full day as Commander-in-Chief. In celebrating the departure of a man now ubiquitously known as  “The Great Divider”, we rallied for the world’s largest party with bushbash09.com. The site encouraged people to use existing web tools (Facebook for attendees, Yelp to find a location, etc.) to plan and promote their own Bush Bash themed parties across the nation.

In addition, we offered party themes, downloadable posters, masks, and other party favors, and a Bush Nickname Generator to get everyone in the spirit. The site asked everyone to post their party photos on Flickr the day after, as the homepage was replaced with a collected photo archive of all the Bush Bashes throughout the nation.

bushbash09.com

Co-creators: Brian Lightbody, Arthur Purvis

Web design assistance: Mike Essl and Alexander Tochilovsky, studio ME/AT

Additional design/Illustration/Masks: Erika Lee

Special thanks to Peter Esveld and Goro Harumi for additional programming, and Matt Owens for his George W. Bush likeness which was used on the homepage and mask.

In 2004, three years into a post 9-11 world, two years after the highly contentious invasion of Iraq, and a year after CIA agent Valerie Plame was outed by newspaper columnist Robert Novak, public sediment was brewing with questions about accuracy in the media. There was a new wave of skepticism questioning how the news media was shaping the discourse of these issues, and how this affected public support, or as some would call it, public disillusion.

In an effort to educate others (and ourselves) on this issue, Brian Ponto and I created Freedom of the Press, a 32-page newspaper that summarized the current state of the media industry using quotes, facts, and figures from cited sources. It was designed as a crash course—a quick read to prompt curiosity and discussion. The newspaper covered the deregulation and tax breaks which led to the rise of multi-national media conglomerates, exactly how many assets they own, and (in an election year) how much influence one company could potentially yield in one election race.

In addition to distributing copies at college campuses, bookstores, and other media organizations, we rebranded a few newsstands as our own and placed them in high-traffic areas of New York City.

Co-creator: Brian Ponto

Awards and press: Media Channel, MediaRights, Communication Arts, Type Director’s Club, AIGA cause/affect

Thanks Ian.

For the 2004 presidential election, we followed the premise of the newspaper and created a pamphlet that summarized the history of voting rights in the U.S. The pamphlet included a fold-out poster which showed (in proportion) how tiny the number of votes that swung the 2004 election actually was. These were distributed by various voter registration organizations across the country.