Instructional posters for a Philippine election, drawn as 1930s rubberhose cartoons. Turtles show the right way and monkeys the wrong way, so the species tells you which panel is right before anyone reads.
The OPSS! posters are polling precinct instructions for the 2023 Philippine Barangay and SK elections, drawn as 1930s rubberhose cartoons. Precinct rules usually go up as walls of typed Tagalog that people walk past, so the instructions became a cartoon.
The set. Every poster is one rule, one pair of panels.
OPSS! is both the acronym and the warning
Orderly, peaceful, safe and secure spells OPSS, which in Filipino is what you say when someone is about to do the wrong thing.
Said out loud, it is "oops".
The campaign hangs off that pun, with the same banner on every poster.
Turtles do it right and monkeys do it wrong, in rubberhose style
Every poster is two panels, a green check and a red cross, and the species says which is which before anyone reads.
Turtles are slow and patient, so they queue, cover their ballots and bin their trash.
Monkeys are quick and thoughtless, so they push through doorways and eat where they should not.
Rubberhose is friendly and old enough to be neutral on election day.
The priority poster says PWD, Buntis and Senior, mixing English and Tagalog the way a precinct volunteer says it.
One character sheet covers eleven scenarios
Eleven scenarios needed one consistent cast, so the characters were built as a sheet first.
The same turtle appears as a kid in a cap, a pregnant woman, an old man with a cane, and a wheelchair user.
A new scenario only needed a new action drawn.
The set went up on a real precinct board
The posters were printed and taped up at a real precinct.
In the first photo the priority poster hangs beside four sheets of typed, all-caps instructions.
The full set runs along the queue rail.
The eating area sign is the one poster without a do and a don't. It shows two characters eating.
