French legislatures | Posters with strength

The left bloc may not win a majority in the early elections, the first round of which will take place on Sunday in France. But he undoubtedly wins on the side of campaign posters, the result of an appeal to all launched by a “committed designer”.

In the days after parliament was dissolved, Geoffrey Dorne, 39, created a collaborative graphic design website to support the New Popular Front, the left-wing alliance bringing together the Socialist Party, La France Insoumise, the Greens and the Communists.

“The idea was to encourage people to make posters which would illustrate the measures of the program and to bring them together on a website,” he explained to the media in mid-June. 20 Minutes.

Created in a few hours, the 24×36.art platform has met with unexpected success. In a few days, Geoffrey Dorne and his colleague Mathias Rabiot received more than a thousand proposals, of which a hundred were selected for the site. “The only rule is to convey a positive, joyful, optimistic message,” he confided to 20 Minutes.

The result, in fact, does not fail to raise a smile. Far from the usual campaign posters, the visual collected by 24×36.art plays on humor, intelligence, impertinence, pop culture and historical references. A real wave of originality, which is reminiscent of the visual and slogans of the student demonstrations of May 68.

Here we give a nod to the singer Beyoncé, there to the punk group The Ramones (“Hey, ho! Let’s gauche!”). Other posters play more on words (“The air front is gay”, “So front front front…”) or the alliance’s program, with “peace and love” or nostalgic proposals (tributes to Léon Blum, Prime Minister and leader of the first Popular Front in 1936-1937).

This contrasts sharply with the more predictable proposals of the other parties. The only surprise, and it is a big one: the Ensemble bloc (alliance of the presidential majority) has chosen not to feature Emmanuel Macron on its posters, but rather Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, thus going against custom. Way to distance yourself from a president who has become cumbersome and particularly unpopular? As political scientist Philippe Moreau Chevrolet explains to the French magazine Last minute“candidates no longer want the name of the incumbent president to appear on posters because it penalizes them… Added to this, this year, Emmanuel Macron is responsible for the current chaos, so voters may be tempted to boycott him.”

In a more eccentric register, let us also note the poster of the independent candidate Ludovic Beaujouan, who plays the Viking king, ax in hand, with a slogan as direct as it is vague (“Paris, here we come again!”), and of the candidate “ various left » Richard Vacquer, who places a kitten in his arms.

The two men justified their “coup” by the need to be noticed…