36,231 Dots

From January 1st to August 15th, 2018, 36,231 people were killed or affected by Gun Violence in the United States. We took this inconceivable data point and turned it into portraits of one of the National Rifle Association’s leaders, as well as one of the US Senate’s biggest recipients of NRA money. We set out, pre-November Elections, to raise awareness of one of the most influential and powerful lobbies in the US and those who benefit financially from stopping sensible Gun Legislation.

Awards - THE ART DIRECTORS CLUB // CreativePool Awards UK

THE DRAWINGS

I started drawing these images in early June. As the numbers of gun violence acts kept increasing heading into August, countless revisions had to be made to update the data. In all, over 650,000 dots were rendered by hand.

DIGITAL SEEDING & DELIVERY OF PRINTS

We began seeding the images all over the web, making the illustrations not only available for organic download on DeviantArt, Flickr, Reddit and Tumblr, but also posted on stock sites Alamy and Shutterstock. We even hand delivered screen-printed posters to Cruz Campaign HQ in Dallas.

PRE-REVEAL // GUERRILLA

“Campaign Posters” and murals began popping up all over Austin, San Antonio and Houston leading up to the November Elections in Texas. Twitter and Reddit were stoked using a phantom user profile promoting the image of Senator Cruz.

REVEAL // AVoteIsAWeapon.com

In late October, to coincide with the launch of AVoteIsAWeapon.com, the images made a surprising confession, telling the tale of each and every one of the 36,231 Dots that comprised the portraits. Updated posters, projections and site went live all over Texas. Our site brought every dot to life using dynamic animation and data from GUNVIOLENCEARCHIVE.org