Shepard Fairey in his studio, courtesy of the artist.
Obey Giant x Shepard Fairey: 6 years with Verisart
Learn how Shepard Fairey uses our tools to establish authenticity for physical works and NFTs and grow his brand with web3.
Internationally acclaimed artist Shepard Fairey first joined Verisart in 2016. Discover how Shepard Fairey uses our tools and services to establish authenticity for physical works and NFTs and grow his business and brand with web3.
Shepard Fairey is a multi-talented creative, working across different mediums including street art, painting and prints while being an activist and the founder of OBEY Clothing. The artist gained notoriety in 1989 with his “Andre the Giant has a Posse” sticker campaign.
Today, his works can be found in the permanent collections MoMA, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and others. Fairey has painted over 105 murals across five continents.
Better Certificates of Authenticity
Before using Verisart, Obey Giant’s team used to manually create physical certificates for each work. Switching to Verisart’s patented digital Certificates of Authenticity provided several improvements. The COAs could now be tracked all in one place via Verisart’s dashboard and collectors can see a clear provenance history as each certificate is time stamped on the blockchain.
An example of Obey Giant/ Shepard Fairey Certificate of Authenticity before Verisart, © Obey Giant/Shepard Fairey
After using our Verisart.com platform for several years, Obey Giant now uses our Shopify App, streamlining their workflow even further. Here’s what the brand has to say: “We've been using Verisart for several years and love the additional level of trust it provides to our collectors. We like the certificate and email customization features which ensure that the designs fit with our store branding. The App makes it easy to automatically generate professional Certificates of Authenticity. We recommend Verisart as a premium add-on to other merchants.”
Inaugural NFT sale
In early 2021, Shepard Fairey worked with Verisart to release his inaugural NFT. Fairey participated in Verisart and SuperRare’s curated auction 10x10. The auction featured 10 inaugural NFTs by 10 major contemporary artists, auctioned over 10 weeks.
Fairey’s first NFT, Obey Ideal Power Mural, was an evolution of a mural the artist created in the physical world for a 2017 show at Library Street Collective called “Damaged”. It explores various incarnations of power and how it can be used for positive or negative change in the world.
The work sold for $178,200 and true to his activism, Shepard Fairey donated 25% of the sale proceeds to Amnesty International via Verisart’s Fair Trade Art certificate. Our Fair Trade Art initiative is designed to bring together artists and social impact organizations to do good. The certificate signals that funds from the sale of the artwork are benefiting a charitable cause.
API certification for Degenerate/Regenerate
In December 2021, Shepard Fairey launched his first generative NFT drop. Pulling from Fairey’s 32 years of archives including stencils, illustrations and fine art, the collection programmatically layered iconic images to create 7,400 unique works of digital art.
Each NFT was certified by Verisart using on-demand COA generation with our API for all the works created on the native web3 minting site.
In a blog post announcing the collection, Fairey explains “As an artist, I also love that I can authenticate my digital work through the blockchain similarly to how I do so with my fine art pieces. When I began exploring NFTs earlier this year, I committed to offer the same level of verification. To date, all of my NFTs have come with a Verisart COA and this practice will continue with Degenerate / Regenerate.”
Linking the physical and digital
To provide an additional layer of security and authenticity, Shepard Fairey now uses our secure QR stickers to link physical works with his digital COAs.
The secure QR stickers are designed to be placed on physical creations and linked to the digital COA, creating a phygital link. They can be used to help establish authenticity and gain access to additional content by scanning a QR code with a smartphone.
The QR stickers are made out of tamper-proof holographic paper. Each sticker includes a unique serial number and the QR code contains an embedded secret that exists only in the QR and the Verisart backend and is not visible to anyone else. Shepard Fairey even customized his stickers to include the Obey Giant logo.
Tokengating
Following the launch of Degenerate/Regenerate with an active NFT community on Discord, Shepard Fairey and the Obey Giant team wanted to reward their collectors.
For a limited time, Degenerate/Regenerate holders could purchase an exclusive hoodie featuring an NFT from the collection. Using Verisart’s Shopify App, the Obey Giant team added tokengating to their existing Shopify store. NFT holders connect their wallet and easily redeem their NFT to place an order.
We’re proud to count Shepard Fairey and the Obey Giant Team among the Verisart Community.
Whether you want to mint NFTs, protect against fraud with Certificates of Authenticity, or reward your community with tokengating, Verisart is here to help.
Explore our pricing plans or install our Shopify App to get started.