​ I’m a sucker for a good meme, but are they degrading our politics?

An exhibition at the Design Museum makes clear that subversive images are the currency of echo chambers on both the left and the right. But there are limits to a purely visual society

I’ll tell you what I really admire about Donald Trump: he invented a haircut. OK, it doesn’t look good. It looks like someone shaved a golden retriever, then glued half of the hair on to Boss Nass, king of the Gungans. But if you think it’s easy to come up with something new, give it a try. And how about that weird, infantile yet camp phrasing he uses on Twitter? Do you see what an achievement it is to invent your own syntax? Very hard!

Trump’s face, huge tie, baggy suit and narcissistic manner all make him – apologies for this – iconic. Easily recognisable when reduced to a few essential elements, he represents our moment in history. He crops up a lot in the excellent exhibition Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18 at the Design Museum in London, which demonstrates that good design is an elusive, amoral quantity. Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster struck a chord around the world, becoming a totem for change. When a different demographic saw the same possibility in a red trucker’s cap, we didn’t like it so much. The Make America Great Again slogan is written in Times New Roman, the world’s default font, and was seen as conveying an unaffected, everyman appeal. Genius, or lazy luck?

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H2sbto