Here’s the early branding for America’s 250th birthday
Plus: The art campaign to pass a 28th Amendment
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Hello, in this week’s issue we’ll look at…
Here’s the early branding for America’s 250th birthday
The art campaign to pass a 28th Amendment
TIME did two covers for its double issue on Ukraine
Russia says it was just a coincidence the first cosmonauts to go to the ISS since they invaded Ukraine wore yellow and blue
Here’s the early branding for America’s 250th birthday
The 250th anniversary of America’s independence is coming up in 2026, and the commission tasked with planning the celebration has money-inspired visual branding, with multi-million dollar problems to match.
The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission was created in 2016, and it released its first public service announcement last June featuring voiceovers from former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, plus shots of Marilyn Monroe, a moon landing, and a Pride parade.
The logo and branding for America 250 appears to use Blacker Pro, a wedge serif typeface with oldstyle serif proportions that make it look like a font found on American currency. Blacker Pro was designed by Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Pancini and released by the Italian type foundry Zetafonts in 2018.
Other examples of visual branding for America 250 available online show other currency-inspired design elements, red and blue duotone, and a celebration of America’s presidents, athletes, and landmarks. They’re also trying to make “This Is Our Semiquin” happen.
The commission’s proposals include events like a “Young People’s Continental Congress,” and a multicultural cooking show called “The Great American Mixing Bowl,” according to a presentation shown during a commission meeting this month reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
Congress has given the commission a budget of $30 million, with an expectation it will raise an additional $250 million, but so far, it’s not going well. Per the Journal: big corporate names like Walmart, Home Depot, and Bank of America haven’t signed on despite being approached; the commission’s sole national sponsor so far is Meta; and the commission’s Trump-appointed chairman Daniel DiLella has been accused of transferring the commission’s work to his private foundation and giving friends jobs and contracts.
President Joe Biden renewed DiLella as chair last year, and in a statement, DiLella wrote, “We have hit many roadblocks along the way, and there may be more, but we are on the right path to fulfill our sacred mission to honor this great country.”
The art campaign to pass a 28th Amendment
To promote the Equal Rights Amendment, the group VoteEquality partnered with 28 artists for a campaign to raise awareness and money to pass the ERA on the eve of its 100th anniversary.
The ERA, which says that equality of rights under the law shouldn’t be denied or abridged on account of gender, was first introduced in 1923. A push to ratify it in the 1970s stalled out three states short of the 38 needed to add it to the Constitution, but if ratified now, it would become the 28th Amendment, and the first since 1992.
Artists in the campaign include Katty Huertas, Steve Lambert, Shepard Fairey, and Tracie Ching, who contributed a print of Columbia, the earliest female personification of America.
Ching said her print was meant as a sequel of sorts to her 2018 voter registration poster of Columbia for the Power to the Polls campaign.
“I always wanted to revisit the design,” Ching wrote on Instagram. “The iconography representing this country historically focused on a fraction of the population. My aim was to make classic imagery truer to the American experience, especially where the fight for freedom, equality, and the vote are concerned.”
The ERA was most recently ratified by Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018), and Virginia (2020), reaching the 38-state threshold to become law, but it’s not passed yet. While the House passed a resolution in 2020 removing the amendment’s 1979 deadline, five states that previously ratified it have since rescinded their ratification.
You can see all the artwork from the campaign here.
TIME did two covers for its double issue on Ukraine
For its March 28-April 4, 2022 double issue, TIME magazine put out two covers to show the resilience and agony of Ukraine.
French artist JR photographed one cover showing more than 100 people outside the National Opera in Lviv, Ukraine, holding a 148-foot photo of a 5-year-old refugee named Valeriia who fled to Poland with her mother Taisiia.
“I have so many friends in Kharkiv who are in the shelters,” Taisiia told TIME. “They couldn’t even get out with their children. And here I am, with my sister, my nephew, and my mother in Poland, in a hotel near Warsaw. They take care of us: they give us food; we have a place to sleep. When we crossed the border, volunteers helped people with small children.”
The other cover shows a mother and child evacuating Irpin, outside Kyiv, and was photographed by Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk. He said he hopes the images can reach Russians and help them feel what the war has been like for Ukrainians.
“They will see themselves in us,” Dondyuk said. “They will feel it.”
Russia says it was just a coincidence the first cosmonauts to go to the ISS since they invaded Ukraine wore yellow and blue
When three cosmonauts from the Russian space agency Roscosmos boarded the International Space Station Friday in yellow jumpsuits, their wardrobe choice had the agency denying it was a statement against the war.
In a Telegram post, Roscosmos said the design of the uniforms was chosen “long before current events,” and any speculation that the yellow jumpsuits with blue accents were a nod to Ukraine’s flag were “a funny invention of foreign bloggers and media.”
“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” the agency said, according to a translation by BBC.
Of course, this is coming from the same government that invaded a sovereign nation then banned journalists from describing it as a “war” or “invasion,” so maybe take it with a grain of salt.
The agency shared also shared a post of one of the cosmonauts wearing the same yellow jumpsuit on a previous mission. I don’t know what point they were trying to make, though, because the mission launched in March 2014, right after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. 🤔
Like a celebrity Instagram model getting busted for reposting paparazzi photos to the grid without buying them, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is in hot water for selling campaign merch with the infamous photo of him raising his fist on Jan. 6. Read more in last week’s newsletter. — Hunter
Years ago, in a European youth hostel I introduced myself to a woman as being from America. She said she was as well. My response of course was "Where?" Her response: "Venezuela." Lesson learned. We should be celebrating 250 years of the United States of America.