The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2022
Clean Slate's Mark the Time mural counts how long a record punishes after release
Weeks before a sealing-law vote, Clean Slate put a formerly incarcerated artist's tally-mark mural up — a record, it says, shouldn't be a life sentence.
Clean Slate
What it had to solve
One in three people in the US has a criminal record that restricts access to housing, education and jobs, punishing them long after release. Clean Slate wanted those records sealed, and state legislators were set to vote in just two weeks.
How it works
One in three people in the US has a criminal record. That record restricts their access to housing, education and a job, punishing them long after they leave prison. Clean Slate, an effort to seal criminal records and help millions rebuild their lives, was racing a deadline: state legislators were set to vote on the issue in two weeks.
Mark the Time answered with a mural, hand-painted by a formerly incarcerated New Yorker. It reappropriates the tally marks used to count time served in prison, turning them into an illustration of the injustice and inequality that continues after release.
The campaign's message was deliberately blunt: a conviction record shouldn't be a life sentence. By speaking in the visual language of prison counting, the work made an invisible penalty visible at the exact moment a decision was about to be made. It is preserved in D&AD's awards archive.
Why it lands
- The mural is painted by someone who lived the penalty, so the argument carries testimony rather than statistics.
- Tally marks are the universal visual language of prison time, making a policy issue readable at a glance.
- Releasing it two weeks before the vote made the campaign part of the legislative moment, not background noise.
- By appropriating the mark of punishment, the mural reclaims the symbol: the same count that imprisoned now argues for release.
What it did
Mark the Time put the hidden penalty of a criminal record on a wall in public view two weeks before legislators voted, giving the sealing campaign a visible symbol at the moment it mattered. The work is kept in D&AD's awards archive.
What you can take
Give an abstract policy problem a physical symbol made by the people it punishes; timing it to a vote makes the argument impossible to ignore.
Since then
Mark the Time is preserved in D&AD's awards archive as an example of using public art to shape a political moment. The archive page records the campaign's concept and timing but no vote outcome, and none is claimed here — the work's point is the idea itself: a human-scale, visual argument delivered exactly when it could matter.
Sources
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