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A candidate uploaded shirtless progress pics to bodybuilding dot com. Now they’re in an attack ad.
Magazine art directors dish on what it’s like designing for a social media news cycle
Look at the blue logo Kanye West filed a trademark application for
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A candidate uploaded shirtless progress pics to bodybuilding dot com. Now they’re in an attack ad.
Old, shirtless photos of Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters are part of a new dating app-themed attack ad in Arizona.
“Not For Us,” from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, presents a dating profile for Masters made up of recent campaign shots, shirtless progress pics from when he was training for basketball, and video of him speaking about his opposition to abortion. A voice over asks, “Ever meet someone, but something’s just off?,” and the clip ends with a left swipe and “no, thanks.”
Shirtless mirror selfies in politics are often associated with scandal — think former Reps. Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee — but Masters is guilty in his pics of only being a bro. The selfies were uploaded to a profile on bodybuilding.com by a user who said he was “training to walk-on to” his school basketball team, according to Jewish Insider.
The ad speaks to the anxieties of politics and dating today. A 2020 Pew poll found 71% of Democrats wouldn’t consider being in a relationship with a Trump voter, 47% of Republicans wouldn’t consider being in a relationship with a Clinton voter, and if you stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and brag about it on Bumble, the women of Washington will turn you in.
Welcome to a new era of politicized courtship where conservatives are starting their own Tinders. Dating apps require a healthy dose of skepticism in general, but with politics involved, catfishing isn’t just about using someone else’s pics. Beware of fake feminists and white supremacists posing as moderates. Even if you don’t put your political beliefs in your bio, potential suitors are judging your sunglasses.
As Masters moves to the middle after winning his primary — his campaign website recently scrubbed language saying he was 100% pro-life and now states he supports a ban on late-term and partial-birth abortion — the ad suggests there’s some red flags. It’s part of a broader push by Democrats to paint the candidate as more extreme than he lets on.
A recent DSCC memo calls Masters’ beliefs “dangerous” and “deeply out of step with Arizona” and advises using his own words against him. The group spent as much as $60,000 to reach more than 2 million viewers in the Phoenix metro area with the dating app ad, according to Google’s Ad Library.
Magazine art directors dish on what it’s like designing for a social media news cycle
Print might be dying, but magazine covers are as vital as ever.
AIGA Eye on Design spoke with magazine art directors about the changing role of magazine covers in the digital age and what it’s like designing for a demanding news cycle. Here’s what stood out most to me:
It’s not about the newsstand anymore
Magazine covers often spread first on social media before they ever hit newsstands.
“Instagram and social media seem to be really crucial now that a cover is like a brand extension as much as something that can be on newsstand,” said Tom Alberty, New York Magazine design director. “I feel like more people see covers on Instagram than they do in real life.”
Former TIME art director Edel Rodriguez said people use covers as avatars on social media to show what they’re reading or what they stand for. They also show up IRL too.
“The thing that I noticed also, is people would actually take the magazines and hold them up at protests and things,” he said. “So it changed the magazine from just being a magazine.”
You have to move fast
Rodriguez said he’s posted images to social media “because I had felt like even a weekly magazine was too slow for what was going on,” and the German magazine Der Speigel would sometimes ask to publish images he posted to social media.
“If you come in with something that was a big deal two weeks ago, nobody cares,” he said. “The timing is even more important than the image.”
New York- and Europe-based magazines can sometimes get away with more
When discussing the difference between magazine cover approaches in Europe vs. the U.S., Rodriguez said it’s all about audience.
“TIME magazine has to know that their magazine is probably going to go to Oklahoma, or Nebraska somewhere, sit on someone’s coffee table, so that’s a thought: ‘What are we going to put on this magazine cover that’s going to go out to the Midwest?’” he said. “Someone in Germany or France, they don’t care. They don’t have to. They’re not going to lose any subscribers. I’m actually shocked that TIME magazine published a lot of my covers, because of that.”
You can read the full interview here.
Look at the blue logo Kanye West filed a trademark application for
The trademarks for Kanye West’s fashion brand are coming together.
West’s holding company Mascotte Holdings, Inc., filed a trademark application earlier this month for a blue mark it says it wants to use for retail and online stores and clothing items.
In an Aug. 18 filing, first spotted by attorney Josh Gerben, West’s holding company describes the mark as “two concentric circles. The circumference of the outer circle is represented by a fluted circular line, while the circumference of the inner circle is represented by a plain circular line.” The color blue is “claimed as a feature of the mark,” according to the filing.
An attorney for West first filed a trademark application for the fluted circle logo in July without any mention of color. West has used blue recently for the art for his 2019 Christian rap album Jesus is King and his first piece for Yeezy Gap, the $200 Round Jacket.
His previous attempt at a logo — an eight-point star symbol for Yeezy — was opposed by Walmart. The retailer argued the rapper’s sunburst mark looked too similar to its Spark logo, and it filed a notice of opposition last year. Walmart told Fast Company last month the litigation was confidentially resolved earlier this year.
West’s holding company also filed a trademark application for the word mark “Grotesque.” According to the filings, the name will be used for retail and online stores, clothing, eyewear, jewelry, and other items.
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