Above: Subway advertising for NYC’s new condom campaign.

I recently chatted with writer Emma Pearse from New York Magazine for an article about the city’s new condom campaign. Emma and I had a really wide-ranging conversation, and I found this topic a particularly engaging one as a graphic designer.

Magazine space is tight, and a few fragments from our conversation were finally smushed together to make the quote that ran. But since space is cheap online, I thought it might be worth my time to fill in the gaps and raise a few of the points that Emma couldn’t include in her piece. —RG

No matter how you slice it, the idea that New York City is now giving away 18 million condoms is a pretty staggering thought. What an incredible thing for our city to be doing. 18 million is up from 2.5 million a year ago, and it’s all based around this effort to get as many condoms out there as possible. In the old days, New York’s condoms looked like any old condom you’d buy at the drug store—specifically of the red-wrappered LifeStyle variety. That made it difficult for telepone operators and caseworkers interviewing condom users to nail down if their interview subjects had used one of the city’s condoms or not. And if you don’t know if people are using the free condoms you’re giving out, it’s hard to get money for more.

To this end, anything NYC puts on its condoms to help recognition is a good thing because it helps to keep the condoms coming. Nevertheless, this is a pretty tricky one to advertise, you want to be very inclusive and supportive of all races and orientations, especially because not doing so would miss the point: one large group of non-condom-users are gay men; another is young adults. Particularly in the case of young adults, how do you make condoms accessible without promoting sex or coming off as some kind of scold or—worse—a prude?

In all of these cases, NYC threaded the needle pretty well. We have ads featuring same sex couples in appealing colors that young adults will notice. The campaign’s catchphrase, “Get Some,” is punny and tongue-in-cheek. It’s not full throttle, but it’s also not the dead-boring stat-fest that so many public health campaigns resort to. For all of that fine work, hats off.

In my conversation with Emma, I mentioned that the one of most iconic public health campaigns I could think of—Gran Fury’s guerilla postings from 1986-88—also included a punny line about condoms.

Above: Flier / Crack-n-peel sticker by Gran Fury, 1988.

While the use of punny language is the same, Gran Fury’s flyer is far more iconic. I think this has to do with the fact that the emphasis is entirely on the language. There are no graphics, the message is the graphic. If you look at how “Get Some” is treated, it’s more like a tagline, it’s in cursive, it’s got this big knobby logo to compete with, not to mention a fleet of collagey, MySpacey graphics. It’s a lot to take in. So where I ♥ NY is both a logo and a tagline, “Get Some” is just a tagline. As such, a strong phrase comes off feeling cheeky, almost cloying, more like it came from a Doritos’ ad guy than from Lenny Bruce.

Above: Mr Yuk sticker designed by Wendy (Courtney) Brown for Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital’s poison center in 1971.

Icons are often made from a very limited kit of parts. They also often tend to be the product of a singular vision. Milton Glaser made I ♥ NY out of red, black, white, and American Typewriter. Gran Fury made Men Use Condoms or Beat It from yellow, black, and Futura Condensed Extra Bold. And, to create another icon of public health, Wendy (Courtney) Brown created Mr Yuk from neon green, black, and a grimacing face I think we can all identify with. Yuk!

In adopting the iconography of the New York subway to brand its condom, I think the NYC Department of Health undersold the power of its own message. Yes, the subway is something we all identify with in New York, but it is so dominant that it sort of upstages the idea of getting a condom to protect yourself. I’m sure it will pass the memory test, which is essential for the success of this design, but I’m not sure it will be something that will pass into our design memory beyond that.

Not only that, but I think the subway is an awkward place to couple with sex: it’s dirty, dingy, sometimes a little spooky, and generally the last place I want to think about “getting some,” as it were. And while I know Alice Twemlow mentioned to Emma that she was relieved they didn’t use skyscrapers on the package, I’d say the runner-up cliché for sex would be a train in a tunnel. On the day the campaign launched, hundreds of volunteers were handing out condoms to commuters in the subways on their way to work. At the same time, Yves Béhar-designed dispensers (which, if you ask me, look like dimpled diaphragms) debuted [PDF], making our subway system a one-stop shop for prophylactics.

Maybe, instead of the subway, we could have used Glaser’s red ♥ on a white package. Or maybe “Get Some” in bold gold letters with gold condoms to match. But whatever the condoms we’re giving away look like, I’ll say this: I sure am glad I live in the city that’s doing it. (No pun intended.)