Running for President: Chronicling Almost 200 Years of Propaganda

POLITICS -- May 17, 2012 at 7:21 AM EDT

Running for President: Chronicling Almost 200 Years of Propaganda

Published by the Library of Congress, "Presidential Campaign Posters" is a visual anthology of election season artwork -- images that capture the public sentiment, issues and prevailing design trends of a given campaign era.

The book showcases images from every election since President Andrew Jackson in 1828. Many of the images that come from before the 1900s are formulaic etchings of candidate head-shots paired with flowery slogans. They slowly give way to posters that resemble political cartoons -- minimalist posters laden with Helvetica text and psychedelic caricatures designed to appeal to the young voters of the 1960s. Then, of course, there's President Obama's "Hope" poster, drawn up by Shepard Fairey in 2008, that doesn't even feature the then-candidate's name.

In our accompanying slideshow, preview a sample 13 of the posters featured in the book.

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