This is the Coexist logo you might know: star and crescent, peace sign, the well-known
gender...e, star of David, Wiccan i, yin yang, and Christian cross.
It's the bumper sticker gibberish you see on that 1998 Volvo that just cut you off.
But the real story doesn't start in a co-op in Montpelier, Vermont.
The story of Coexist begins in Poland — and it's had its own battles.
"My name is Piotr Mlodozeniec.
I am a graphic designer.
I am making posters, book covers, record covers, some layouts.
I paint also."
This is his son's room and here's a poster designed by Piotr's dad.
In 2000, a contemporary art museum in Jerusalem held a competition.
The theme was coexistence.
And Mlodozeniec decided to enter.
"I started to write this coexistence in many ways.
You know, handwritten, printed, and so on and so on."
The C reminded him a typical Muslim sign of the crescent.
T as the Christian cross.
And with the X, suddenly he imagined that he could do a Jewish star, so he took it and
wrote Coexistence.
"But then I thought that I don't need this 'ence' at the end."
The poster became part of a worldwide touring exhibition, blown up to massive proportions,
and that's when other people saw an opportunity to take it as their own.
"I do the work, and I throw it into the open world."
Mlodozeniec had let his design travel around the world, but then he forgot about it.
In 2005, he got the first news that something was happening.
Some Indiana University students trademarked an extremely similar design without Mlodozeniec's
or the museum's permission.
They started to sue anybody else selling Coexist gear.
Average t-shirt price: $58.
They registered it as their own logo.
One used it to get his "lifestyle design" degree from the university.
Another co-founder told Newsday that Mlodozeniec was "OK with its use."
"I was really mad at this, because nobody asked me for permission."
Soon, Bono had made the logo a central part of U2's 2005 Vertigo tour.
"Some graffiti sprayed up on a wall not too far from here.
This is Co-Ex-Ist."
The Indiana guys told reporters they got a call that Bono was wearing a headband with
"your" logo.
"Jesus, jew, Muhammed, it's true.
Jesus, jew..."
"And when I heard that leader of U2, Mr. Bono, is using this sign, I even was pleased."
But they didn't ask him for permission, and after the contact with him, they gave him
a tiny credit on the DVD label.
Soon, another Coexist logo showed up with completely nonsensical additions.
"The better is the enemy of the good.
Whoa, I will put the Tao sign in it, I will put the hippie sign in it, I will put Osiris
sign.
Oh it will be great!
It will be all the religions!
Whenever you have something good and you want to make it better—it will spoil and it will
be worse than the original."
Mlodozeniec had been lumped in with lawsuit-happy luxury shirt sellers and a bad design from
California, and it wasn't what his work was really even about.
Mlodozeniec comes from a school of Polish poster-making that emphasizes color and organic
looking pictures.
It's really vibrant.
It's not the ascetic, black and white appearance of the Coexist sign — it's something more
alive and more representative of the work that he's a fan of.
But even though Coexist is different from most of his work, it has a lot of meaning.
Coexist isn't just a bumper sticker everywhere.
To a graphic designer living in Poland, post 9/11, with refugees coming in from an unstable
Syria, it means a lot more.
"In 2000, the situation was not so...complicated like today.
This logo was not so, maybe...actual.
I didn't know that the world will go in this direction.
That, you know, this coexist is, you know, a must.
You have to do it."
So maybe you couldn't quite see that poster in the background.
Fortunately, early on we had some camera adjustment time where it was clear.
This is Horse and Plume, and it's a CYRK poster — CYRK — which means "circus."
Because this poster and many posters like it were made to promote the Polish circus
and they quickly became representative of an entire school of really expressive Polish
poster design.