What get-out-the-vote ads look like for Democrats vs. Republicans in 2021
Even if you took off the candidate names, you’d be able to guess whose it was
Subscribe for your new guide to visual politics:
Hello, in this week’s issue we’ll look at:
What get-out-the-vote ads look like for Democrats vs. Republicans in 2021
The new USPS flag stamp is based on a car dealership flag
Could this tool help news and social media companies fight visual misinformation?
This massive Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition curated by his family is coming next year
What get-out-the-vote ads look like for Democrats vs. Republicans in 2021
Even if you took off the candidate names in the digital get-out-the-vote ads that ran on Facebook’s ad platform in last week’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, you’d be able to guess whose it was.
Republican Glenn Youngkin, who won, ran ads with more traditional red, white, and blue designs to reminder his supporters to vote, while Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s GOTV ad color palette was all over the map, from blue and green (his campaign colors) to hot pink. They’re trying to reach completely different voters, and it shows.
Despite Republican mistrust over voting by mail, Youngkin promoted it heavily in his GOTV messaging, with about 100 different versions of ads that included the term “vote early.”
Both candidates also ran a number of ads guilting supporters to vote because their neighbors were counting on them or could find out if they skipped the election. One Youngkin ad read, “Voting records are public information and researchers are studying your neighborhood.”
Fun fact: social pressure is actually a really effective way to turn out voters.
The new USPS flag stamp is based on a car dealership flag
The U.S. Postal Service announced new stamps for 2022 last week, including the latest edition of their American flag stamp, by illustrator Laura Stutzman with Ethel Kessler as art director.
The illustration is based on three photos Stutzman took of the same Maryland car dealership flag, and the images were then arranged as if in a circular formation, like the flags that encircle the Washington Monument, per USPS. The 2022 stamp will be Stutzman’s ninth flag stamp, following two blocks of four stamps released in 2008 and 2013.
“Everything pretty much comes to a screeching stop to accommodate it because it has an emotional aspect that’s different than pop culture and other things that we do,” she told me. “To get really sappy, I’m 63, and my mom died when I was 30, and every time I do a stamp, I think of her, I think of how proud she would have been.”
Stamps are unlike any other work Stutzman does, she said.
“It’s creating currency,” she said. “So that’s not like any other job, you know, when you create something that has that intrinsic value that can’t be copied.”
All the rules for displaying the flag IRL apply to depicting it on a stamp.
“You have to keep in mind all of the protocols for displaying the flag,” she said. “If I were to set up an image that had the flag lit in the wrong way or hanging the wrong way, or doesn’t have 50 stars, all of that applies, and there is a very strict protocol for handling the flag and displaying it.”
While stamp design tends to be more traditional, Stutzman said it’s “not as stiff and rigid as it used to be.”
“When the Love stamp came out, that was when it turned a huge corner,” she said. “A stamp that commemorates, that is highlighting and embracing love, that was just totally different.”
The 2022 Love stamp, by Bailey Sullivan, will come in blue and pink.
Other stamps coming next year include a portrait of Edmonia Lewis, the first professional African-American sculptor, by Alex Bostic; a portrait of legendary Washington Post publisher and president Katharine Graham, by Lynn Staley; and a book of four stamps depicting female athletes in yellow laurel branches to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, by Melinda Beck.
“The new 2022 stamps are miniature works of art, designed to be educational and appeal to collectors and pen pals around the world,” USPS Stamp Services Director William Gicker said in a statement.
You can see the full list of new stamps here.
Could this tool help news and social media companies fight visual misinformation?
A group of media and technology companies that partnered with Adobe to develop tools to verify photo information are expected to release an open-source version next year.
The group, Content Authentic Initiative, or CAI, shows an example on its website of what the verification tool could look like, with an ⓘ icon in the top right of a photo that users can click to see who produced an image and when, as well as any editing done on the photo, like color and adjustment.
The ⓘ is a placeholder for some future content credential icon, Andy Parsons, CAI director at Adobe, told Neiman Lab. The goal is to create a symbol that “is internationally recognizable, something that has meaning across cultures but also is distinctive,” like the lock icon used in web browsers.
“No one would even think about sending their credit card or personal information to a website without the lock,” Parsons said. “The lock provides some assurances about security in the same way that we want the [content credential] icon that we ultimately decide to use universally to represent trust and transparency for media.”
CAI members include BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Gannett, Getty Images, McClatchy, Nikon, the New York Times, Twitter, and the Washington Post.
This massive Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition curated by his family is coming next year
The family of Jean-Michel Basquiat curated an exhibition opening next year of more than 200 pieces from the artist, including never-before-seen paintings, drawings, and ephemera.
The exhibition design is lead by Sir David Adjaye OBE, who previously worked on the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, with visual branding by Pentagram.
“The framework of the show as a family-initiated project gives it this incredibly powerful point of view, a really unprecedented lens through which to see his work,” Pentagram partner Abbott Miller said in a statement.
Titled Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure after a 1987 painting, the exhibition opens April 9, 2022 at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in New York City.
This is cool
Harvey Milk was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1955 because of his sexual orientation, and there’s now a Navy ship named after him. 🇺🇸🏳️🌈