WORK - Marie Bliss Delpy

APPLY launched publicly in 2020 with an effort to reimagine the universally loved “I Voted” sticker.” All profits from the initiative were donated to The Voter Participation Center, a remarkable organization working to reshape the American electorate to reflect the country’s changing demographics

Over nearly forty years, the “I Voted” sticker has been a joyful emblem of participation in elections in the United States. The cheap, temporary stickers – typically printed with patriotic splashes of red, white, and blue – are made available on election day by a range of civic groups (local governments and election boards, nonprofits, and small businesses. The stickers are peeled by young and old to celebrate participation and to encourage communities to get out and vote.

And yet, the terrifyingly important 2020 election didn’t look like anything we’ve seen before. A global pandemic had claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and wreaked havoc on the economy; a vacuum of leadership and empathy in the highest levels of the Federal Government has divided our country further; misinformation and foreign influence abetted by the President imperil the integrity of our election and a peaceful transition of power; and escalated, orchestrated attacks on voting rights make participation in this election a precious, fragile endeavor. Times had changed, and so must our stickers.

What should an “I Voted” sticker look like when the process of voting itself is so imperiled? How can people of different backgrounds use stickers to rally around shared civic responsibilities, especially in times of extraordinary fear, division, and unrest? These questions were so compelling that we embarked on designing a set of stickers to try and answer them. Apply 2020 features three interpretations of the voting sticker, photographed in use across New York City. It is an invitation to participate, play, and get out the vote.

We enlisted the help of two of our favorite NYC-based designers (Chloe Scheffe and Zipeng Zhu), and we've also been hard at work on our own design. As the world and this election felt more uncertain each day, we’ve become more grounded in our conviction that stickers can provide light in hard times. These small, sticky pictures help us express ourselves creatively, provide pathways into hard conversations, and explore our identities around issues we care about most. They helped us participate. It is our hope that they helped more of us to get out and vote.