Gauntlet Gallery
What is Shepard Fairey’s piece called “Don't Be A MFR”?
Artist Statement
18 x 24 inch screen print on cream speckle tone paper. Signed and numbered edition of 450. $45
Summary
"Don't Be A MFR" is a 2015 Shepard Fairey screen print published by Obey Giant. It measures 18 x 24 inches and is printed on cream speckle tone paper. The work is a signed and numbered first edition of 450, released at an original price of $45. Its blunt typographic slogan delivers a confrontational, direct-address message in Fairey's familiar bold graphic vocabulary. As a mid-2015 Obey Giant release within his collaborations and pop-culture run, the piece pairs sloganeering text with the artist's signature high-contrast poster aesthetic, packaging a pointed admonition in an accessible, affordable studio edition.
Why It Matters
"Don't Be A MFR" sits in Fairey's prolific 2015 stretch of weekly studio editions, where he used affordable signed screen prints to keep his street-poster sensibility circulating among collectors. The value here is accessibility paired with attitude: a small, clearly defined edition of 450 at an entry-level $45 price made it an approachable way to own a signed Fairey while the slogan-forward design carries the irreverent, confrontational tone that runs through his pop-culture work. For a collector database, the differentiator is context rather than spectacle. This is not a marquee political portrait but a representative example of how Fairey deploys typography as a delivery system for a punchy message, trusting bold lettering and high-contrast composition to do the persuading. Its grounding facts are modest and verifiable: year, medium, paper, dimensions, edition size, signature, and publisher. That restraint is precisely what makes it useful to track. It documents the cadence and pricing of Obey Giant's 2015 output, anchors a cluster of same-year releases, and rewards collectors who value the consistency of Fairey's graphic voice over one-off rarity.
Collector Perspective
This print appeals to collectors building a broad Fairey holding who want an affordable, signed, numbered example rather than a headline piece. At a modest 18 x 24 inches it frames easily and slots into a gallery wall of slogan-driven graphic prints, where its bold lettering reads cleanly from across a room. Entry-level buyers and newer Fairey collectors are the natural audience, drawn by the low original price point and the security of a signed and numbered edition of 450. It fits naturally alongside other 2015 Obey Giant studio releases, helping complete a chronological run of that year. Display appeal rests on punchy typography and high contrast, making it a confident accent piece rather than a centerpiece.
Historical Context
"Don't Be A MFR" belongs to Fairey's mid-2010s studio practice, when Obey Giant issued a steady stream of signed screen-print editions through obeygiant.com. By 2015 Fairey was well past his Early OBEY sticker origins and his 2008 Obama-era breakout, operating as an established graphic artist who balanced large-scale murals and political portraiture with a continuous output of affordable collector editions. This print exemplifies that latter mode: a quick-hit, slogan-based screen print on his customary cream speckle tone paper, signed and numbered in an edition of 450. Within his arc it documents the routine, almost serial nature of his 2015 releases rather than a singular milestone, showing how he sustained collector engagement and kept his confrontational street voice in print form throughout the period between his major political campaigns.
FAQ
What are the dimensions and medium of this print?
"Don't Be A MFR" is a screen print measuring 18 x 24 inches, printed on cream speckle tone paper. It was published by Obey Giant in 2015 as part of Shepard Fairey's studio edition output. The combination of screen-print medium and speckle tone paper is consistent with many of his releases from this period.
How large is the edition?
It is a first edition limited to 450 prints. Each print is signed and numbered by Shepard Fairey, which is the standard practice for Obey Giant editions of this type. The defined edition size of 450 places it among Fairey's mid-sized signed studio releases from 2015.
What was the original release price?
The print was released at an original price of $45 through Obey Giant in 2015. That entry-level price point made it an accessible signed and numbered Fairey edition at the time of release. Current market value is not established in the source record.
Who published this print and when?
It was published by Obey Giant, Shepard Fairey's own studio imprint, with a release date of June 9, 2015. Obey Giant handled the signed and numbered edition of 450 directly through its channels, as it did with most of Fairey's screen prints from this period.
Related Works
About the Artist
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970, Charleston, South Carolina) is an American street artist, graphic designer, and activist, and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. His 1989 “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker grew into the global OBEY GIANT campaign — an ongoing experiment in propaganda, obedience, and visual culture. He reached worldwide recognition with the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama, now held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Across screen prints, stencils, murals, and collage, Fairey channels propaganda aesthetics toward themes of peace, justice, environmentalism, and civil rights. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and LACMA.