Barack Obama "Hope" poster

Shepard Fairey for Barack Obama's campaign, 2008 Working from an Associated Press photograph by Mannie Garcia, Fairey reduced Obama's face to a stencil in solid red, beige and two blues, gazing up and away, above a single word. He made the first version in a day, and that word changed from Progress to Hope after the campaign raised concerns. The flat, limited palette nods to social realism, yet it reads instantly at any size, which made it endlessly reproducible and endlessly parodied. The National Portrait Gallery acquired his hand-finished collage in 2009, and even the maker of the Joker image of Obama named Fairey as his greatest influence.