HighStreet Design Studio and Lifestyle Store - Top

About This Location

HighStreet Design Studio and Lifestyle Store is a hybrid design firm and urban lifestyle store. The store has been showcased in Cincinnati Magazine, The New York Times, the HOW blog and CityBeat. The design firm has been featured in HGTV's What You Get for the Money. The store is open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm. Parking is a little tricky, there's limited parking in front of the store until 3pm and on the hill adjacent to the store.

About the Mural

This is a version of the image that started it all, Obey Giant. Originally created in 1996, it's a simplified version of his original Andre the Giant has a Posse stickers.

This transition marked a move away from the Andre the Giant has a Posse in-joke and towards the Obey Giant rebellion against mass media and mainstream culture. This zoomed in version emphasizes the Orwellian big brother aspect of the image. A handful of aspects of the image implies that there is a deep meaning behind the image. The opposite is true. Fairey writes:

the lack of message was part of my idea that people can be manipulated just by a stylistic approach – style over substance.

This version of Andre is more of a Rorschach test than his previous image. The previous version was a little silly and tongue in cheek. This version is more ambiguous. If you know it's a stylized version of Andre the Giant, it's clearly a joke. If you don't, it's almost sinister.

This particular installation is much more like his earlier work in that it's installed over a billboard.