#i love diy! i hate violence! two things can be true!

[kindaeccentric]

The thing about L.S. Dunes is, I love them, I really love them, I made fanart for them, and everyone who knows me will tell you it's the highest honor I can bestow. And they are a new band, despite everyone's previous involvements, they are a completely fresh new thing, one I was (and still am) excited to witness, watch from the very start. I've never been to any band this early. But then this whole thing with the concerts... it's so disheartening to realise you're not one of the cool kids, to know you are not accepted as a part of this new thing, because you've never been into the hardcore scene and probably never will be. That you're missing out and will keep missing out, because you, you who jumped and danced in second row at niche electronic shows in clubs of 400-500 people with a crowdsurfing singer, are not suited for this kind of rowdy crowd, you are not one of them. And like. Ok. It's just... Unfair? 'If you can't handle a hc show, stand in the back or don't go' is not a take you think it is. You think you're saying it's my and like-minded people's fault for not being fun and cool enough, that we have some underlying agenda of being a spoilsport, but what I hear is 'L.S. Dunes is not for you, it's for us and we will behave like wild animals and play tough, because that's our idea of punk'. I always thought punk is anti-establishment and pro-community, that kindness and support are the main values, but I guess now it's about accepting that you might get injured at a show and being ok with it. It doesn't matter where I live or if I will ever go to a show, it's about this rhetoric of 'if you want to be in the front, but don't like moshing, it means you're a Frank-obsessed stalker and you're not a genuine fan of the band'. It's about this exclusion and creating a narrative that justifies it, even if that narrative is a hurtful generalization. What I'm trying to say here is, L.S. Dunes IS NOT your typical hardcore show, as much as you want to claim otherwise, and it's not even about the genre, their fanbase should celebrate the diversity within it, encourage the community spirit, because that's more hardcore than a mosh pit, more punk than acting tough. There is something between 'just standing there' and throwing your body at other people, if you can believe it.

[silenceofthecookies]

Bleach matchup - nakunakunomi

Giveaway prize for @nakunakunomi​

Matchup for me :D No gender preferences I am a biromantic ace. 

Your age: 24 

Your general appearance - most striking features, your fashion style, etc.

Answer: Chubby mermaid lol. Long curly hair almost all the way down my back. Red at the moment, but I’ve had all colors of the rainbow. Ears pierced multiple times and a septum ring whenever I leave the house. My general style is comfy alternative, loads of black, boots and ripped jeans but baggy shirts and sweaters. I don’t like drawing much attention to my chest because my boobs are a very prominent feature. Hourglass figure with extra minutes: so there’s boobs and ass but also a tummy and such. I have dimples when I laugh and a whole bunch of moles over my body. I like a killer liner and mascara but don’t necessary wear makeup every day. I like 4 tattoos and waiting for that fifth one. 

Your MBTI, western zodiac chart, etc.

Answer: INFP (mediator), Scorpio sun, Libra moon, Pisces ascending. Year of the rat. I’d say my MBTI type is pretty accurate and while I don’t have many of the bitchy traits often assigned to Scorpios, I do have some of the passion towards things I care about and a generally jealous and stubborn personality. 

Your personality, how you perceive yourself and how people around you perceive you.*

Answer: Stubbornness and some jealousy (that is always internalized) are my worst traits. I lack self-esteem and confidence and get anxious in new situations. Once I am around people I trust I blossom open and become more giggly (lame jokes and such) my humor is about 50% puns and 50% sarcasm. I am quick-witted with ‘mean’ remarks but I will never intend to offend or cause harm to anyone. Tough exterior comes with a soft interior. I tend to overthink and worry a lot and will usually put a friend’s needs above mine. I often have people coming to me for advice or to help them calm down. I will be honest in the softest way possible, even if the things I need to say aren’t necessarily nice. I want my friends to flourish. I get easily distracted by cute things and can really enjoy beautiful sights, nice food, good company… i am heavily introverted but I do need the handful of people I care about to flourish myself. I accumulate facts and know loads of small things about a lot of things. I like adding in fun facts every now and then but sometimes I come across as a know-it-all and then I will get really self-conscious about it. I either talk up a storm nonstop or turn into myself and get really really quiet. 

Your hobbies, interests, life goals etc.*

Answer: anything creative: reading and writing, drawing (although I’m terrible at it), pixel art. Singing, making music, playing instruments, DIYing things. I am quite good with makeup and wigs, and I cosplay but the sewing I still struggle with. I love acting and gaming as well although I don’t spend that much time on them. I am super heavily interested in true crime, cases, and the psychology of murderers and such. I tend to get overexcited talking about such cases, never celebrating violence, but just being very fascinated by what a human brain can do. I also just really love riddles, mysteries, and solving them. I’d love to become a teacher or a professional dog trainer. I love animals more than I love people and if I could work with dogs every day of my life that’d be amazing. An unrealistic goal would be to sing for a living, or do musicals. But I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen. 

Your favorites, likes, dislikes, pet peeves, fears.*

Answer: food! Mainly Asian dishes (from all of Asia) and pastas. I love cooking and experimenting in the kitchen and trying out new things to taste. I’m vegetarian but not vegan and I will try everything that’s not meat or fish at least once! I love all kinds of animals, not only your average pets. I will also go pet the cows, and in the zoo you’ll have to drag me away by my ankles from the reptilians and the aquarium. I am fascinated by them and I love them. I love plants and flowers, and if you’d let me be, Id have a small jungle in my house with all kinds of plants and animals. I just love taking care of them, talking to them… I dislike arrogant people, people who are rude against serving staff. I dislike impoliteness and laziness in the sense that other people are suffering from your lack of work. If I am in a group project I will never procrastinate because it can drag the whole group down, it’s okay to be lazy if it only impacts yourself. I am afraid of loneliness and the fact that everyone I know just pretends to like me while talking behind my back and secretly hating me. I am not easily startled by monsters, animals, and such, but I do get a little paranoid if I have to walk in the street in the middle of the night. (a side effect from the true-crime consumption) 

Any additional info you would like to share, fun facts, etc.

Answer: I think I added most things in the other walls of text (sorry they are so long). But when it comes to relationship and goals around that there are these things that I think are most important: 

Patience, because I have some anxiety issues as well as fear of commitment. I will definitely need some reassurance. Also consent is the sexiest thing in the world, and that’s coming from an ace person. Honesty, liars are out. I have a lot of trouble trusting again once there has been a breach of trust. White lies for surprises and such is one thing, but any intentional lying in order to avoid confrontation is an absolute dealbreaker. 

Love language is mostly quality time and words of affirmation, and that’s what I like too, as well as soft PDA and affections: cuddles, kisses, hand holding… I like spending time together, and even more so I like actually doing things together: sharing hobbies, going out, dates, dinners, walks, adventures, travels… all the things! :hellmo: 

I match you with...

Nelliel Tu Odelschwank

Nelliel is the perfect match for you! She’s extroverted so she’ll be the first one to reach out to you. Her intentions are always very clear, though she’s very careful to not overstep any boundaries. No matter how much time you need because of your anxiety and commitment issues, Nelliel has set her mind on you and she will be as patient as you need her to be.

Nelliel is the type of woman to support you through anything, good or bad. You want to adopt a pet? She’ll go with you and help you pick if needed. You want plants on every free surface in your house? Time to go to the shop. You’re about to meet some new people and you’re anxious? She’s there right next to you.

Nelliels love languages are physical touch and quality time. As long as she an be close enough to sneak a hug or a kiss in every now and then, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Seeing you being passionate about your hobbies makes her smile every time and she will gladly try your hobbies as well. She loves drawing with you, even if neither of you are very good at it.  Sometimes, when making something, she’ll ask you to sing something for her. She might join in, but she prefers to hear you sing.

Nelliel too loves reading a lot, so being snuggled up together on the couch under the same blanket, both with your own book and your own cup of tea is a regular happening. And if you start cooking something for her? Oh god, this woman will be putty in your hand. She’s not a very picky eater and will eat literally anything you make her. Food is another thing she loves, and with you spoiling her with all these amazing dishes, you can expect lots of hugs and kisses in return.

Late night conversations between you and Nelliel will be the absolute best. With your general knowledge and Nelliels imagination, conversations can go to the weirdest but most amazing places. Nelliel loves your humour as well and will gladly join in with her own lame jokes and puns. It’ll be one pun after the other and before you know it, the two of you will be clutching your stomachs.

One of the many things Nelliel loves about you is your hair. The curls, the colours, the length… she thinks it’s absolutely gorgeous. Another thing she absolutely loves about you are your dimples. They are the cutest thing and she will surprise kiss then while you’re laughing.

Cheerfulness aside, Nelliel can be serious when needed. She’s a great listener and gives great advice as well. Despite what her cheerful attitude would let on, Nelliel is very perceptive and knows when something is bothering you. Much like you, Nelliel can’t stand liars either. She’s very clear in communication and refuses to have any serious secrets from you, even if they’re hard to talk about. During arguments, Nelliel will rarely raise her voice. Violence, physically verbally or emotionally, are a big no-no for her, so she’ll always remain mature during these moments.

[filmista]

Thelma & Louise

I should credit Thelma and Louise as the film that sparked my love of vintage American cars, not love in the sense that I’m obsessed but aesthetically speaking they are one of my favorite things.

So if anyone ever sent a 66 Thunderbird my way, I’d possibly be eternally grateful…

Thelma and Louise is I think with Easy Rider one of the first road movies I ever saw, at the time of my first watch I was deeply impressed it and I absolutely adored it.

I loved the vastness of the road and what looked to me like the exhilarating freedom of having a wide open space completely to yourself, that sensation of being alone in the middle of nowhere seemed wondrous to me.

Of course, now I see that driving for miles on end and having to sleep in some disgusting, hopefully not roach filled motel has to be exhausting.

And then there is, of course, the terrifying possibility of running out of drinkable liquids and many more unpleasant scenarios I imagine.

So perhaps that side of is a little less romantic to me now, though still the wide open road and what I like to call “car freedom” are still beautiful cinematographically speaking, there are just certain parts of the United States that lend themselves most excellently for beautiful imagery.

Deep brown and reds, intense orange and red from a sunset, a deep blue sky, dust rising from the ground as a car in a bright candy like color speeds past; and Thelma and Louise captures that almost natural poetical quality of the landscape brilliantly.

But what at the time really impressed me most is that it has at It’s center two women who are best friends, in a nonchick flick like environment, complete with an evolving character arc it was something that I hadn’t seen before and that I instantly loved when I was younger and more impressionable.

Now to say that I admired Thelma and Louise would go a bit far, I have absolutely no desire to go on a revenge mission, and what they did would not be something I’d endorse as a fun road trip.

In fact, I hate violence in pretty much all of its forms and I’m afraid of guns, and It’s not even at all that likely that as a European I’d ever come face to face with one, but still the mere thought is capable of inducing a light panic sensation in me.

But I loved the film because rather than two heroes it gave us two antiheroines: Two complicated women, who are allowed to embrace their dark and violent side, without being either seen as “dangerously sexy”, or a crazy, walking danger to society that must be locked up ASAP.

Yes Thelma and Louise more than push the line of what is morally correct, knowingly so in the end but It’s precisely that, that I found so exhilarating and still do when watching it, that they were allowed to push the lines of what is morally correct and be morally apprehensive in the way that until then only men were allowed to be in film.

Thelma and Louise flirts or rather makes love with the idea that women can be just as dubious and ruthless in nature as some male characters, and why shouldn’t they, after all, both are human and human nature can simply be scary and vicious to behold.

Although at the beginning of the film, both the ladies are quite sedated in their own way and stuck in their small town lives, of which they’re tired so they’re longing for a weekend of fun away together.

But this weekend of fun did not originally include murder and robbery, it was only after the ladies are pushed to their final straw that things got out of control, it still doesn’t justify some of their acts but it does make them more comprehensible.

Thelma and Louise were both trapped in the same routinary, boring small town life, their crimes start accidentally and as small ones but the longer they are on the road, finally free from any sort of obligation for pretty much the first time in their lives it exhilarates and intoxicates them; It’s their first real sip on freedom of the mind and body and they become drunk on it…

And it does makes sense if you deny someone something their whole lives or you finally allow them to do something they might overindulge, to the point where they damage themselves and they might even realize they’re doing it, but they’re at the point they can’t even stop themselves.

My best friend loves road movies but she had never seen Thelma and Louise which is in my eyes a serious offense as both a movie lover and a woman, after all, Thelma and Louise is perhaps the ultimate chick flick!

And with chick flick, I don’t mean some silly, largely female driven, completely forgettable romantic comedy but a film that celebrates female friendship and that has no conniving, bitchy backstabbing of the “you stole my boyfriend, now you're gonna pay you bitch!” sort.

But actually has two incredibly different women, that are fully accepting of the other and that support and stand up for each other.

I also told her that It’s perhaps the only female road/crime movie ever made and that makes it unique, legendary and pretty much immortal, but I didn’t want to sound like a lecturing university professor so I just put in the film.

My best friend’s first question in a long while was: “exactly at one point does too much denim on denim become a crime?” To which I said there’s no such thing as too much denim, except maybe if you start looking like you just came back from robbing the Levi’s store, after all, you only need one pair of 5O1’s do you?

But then my friend felt it necessary to pause the film and dissect the style of the two heroines. My friend thought it was brilliantly done how the change in their style reflects the change in their personality.

At the beginning of the film both dress conservatively so as to probably not stand out too much, but near the end as they embrace their I don’t give a damn mentality, they are both in full outlawishly cool glory.

That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about the film, how It’s so stylish yet at the same time so fun loving and relaxed, while still striking serious emotional chords.

You’ve got drinks, line dancing, amazing pairs of vintage jeans, DIY denim crop tops, vintage pin-up like hair scarfs and criminally cool sunglasses, seriously is it humanly possible to look cooler while breaking the law?

You’ve got the original selfie, singing along with the windows rolled down, sun-kissed skin, Sarandon’s and Davis’s red hair that reflects the sunlight and blows in the wind as they speed past in their Thunderbird, if this film doesn’t make you want to get into a vintage car and drive in an arid, eroded landscape nothing will.

I love that the film can be gorgeous and embrace the whole beauty of the landscape the two ladies are in, have fun and still have a serious and emotional backbone.

Thelma and Louise does illustrate coherently, sometimes terrifyingly so what being female in this world, unfortunately, entails sometimes.

Our two ladies had no criminal ambitions, their turning point was a rape, Louise lost her temper at a man who was in the process of raping her best friend, and she would've let him walk with a lecture, if it hadn’t been for the words that dug his own grave: “Bitch, I should’ve gone the ahead and fucked her”, to which Louise responds What did you say? To which he responds “ I said suck my cock”, at which point Louise lost it.

If he had simply apologized and kept shut it wouldn’t have ended in his demise, but his own ego and vanity dug his grave. Farther along the road, Thelma and Louise meet more unpleasant types of men and give all of them a lesson in respecting women, but the only man they actually killed is the rapist.

Still, Thelma and Louise was seen as a male hating and viciously male-bashing film. And yes it is true that pretty much all of the men respond to unpleasant male stereotypes and cliches.

They are but there not out of hate but to merely illustrate what sort of behaviour women have to deal with at times, yes in grossly stereotyped ways but still every woman has encountered at least one of the men in this once, the obscene gesture of the truck driver is one I can sincerely say I’ve had thrown my way once too.

But like I said the two ladies technically only kill one man, while there’s plenty of films in which a man blows away one or more women at a merciless flick of his gun, and nobody makes that loud a fuss.

Thelma and Louise merely lets women to put it a sophisticated way be vindictive, violence loving, authority-defying, foul mouthing bitches for once too, that’s only fair representation.

Human nature is complex, and I believe that plenty of women if pushed past a certain could possibly become Thelma or Louise. Still, Thelma and Louise has decent and kind men too.

Like Louise’s somewhat childish, Elvis Presley resembling boyfriend, Jimmy, but who does genuinely seem to love her and helps her without question when she asks him to, she is asking him to trust her and he does so.

It shows an obvious fact, you have all kinds of men, good, respectful, kind ones or hopeless romantics and just plain mean assholes.

Only Thelma and Louise ran into the latter one too many times, and I do believe that one many time can be a breaking point in how a woman perceives men.

One insult or one single obscene gesture could be one too many and wreak irreversible damage, and I believe that’s what happened with Thelma and Louise, they were just so tired and angry at all the men in their lives, that they to some degree lost their ability to perhaps see them as human beings, but the process that let them there was no fault of theirs.

I’ve personally always loved Thelma and Louise’s ending, but my friend was disappointed. She would have wanted them to turn round and turn themselves into the police officers with a defiant attitude.

I told her that, that way they would have given in to that which they fought against and it would have been the complete opposite of their personal beliefs at that moment.

For me, the ending is pardoned my French ultimate fuckin freedom! What after all is freer than choosing how you are to go out of this world, to chose how and when you die.

They probably had an array of rather dismal possibilities, bullets or electrical chairs. The point is that all those endings would have been inflicted by someone else.

Thelma and Louise in an ultimate act of defiance didn’t even give someone else, in this case, it would have been a man, the possibility of touching them in their final hour much less of killing them.

So when it came to turning themselves in basically like saying I’m giving you permission to shoot me or the deep abyss they chose driving off into the cliff, welcoming the deep abyss like a friend.

And even if you don’t see any poetic justice in it, purely cinematography wise It’s the most aesthetically pleasing death, I don’t think you could argue that it isn’t.

I mean think about it, if wild horses, Mustangs had conscious thought and they could choose between giving into their captor and being tamed or running off a cliff, I think there’s a high chance they’d chose the latter. Anyway, before I delve into anything else, I will leave you guys with the storyline, even if I assume everyone knows it by now:

Whilst on a short weekend getaway, Louise shoots a man who had tried to rape Thelma. Due to the incriminating circumstances, they make a run for it but are soon followed closely by the authorities including a local policeman who is sympathetic to their plight.

The federal authorities, however, have less compassion and thus a cross country chase ensues for the two fugitives. Along the way, both women rediscover the strength of their friendship and surprising aspects of their personalities and self-strengths in the trying times.

Thelma and Louise despite being incredibly beautifully shot and pleasing to the eyes, and country music that isn’t unpleasant to the ears, but rather of the kind that I find that even when driving around in a car in Europe you could put on and fantasize you’re on a road trip through the US.

It’s still mostly dialogue based, Thelma and Louise spend most of the time joking, laughing talking heart to heart and emotionally confiding in one another.

So yes while you get panoramic views of astounding beauty, the real protagonist is the written word no doubt about it. The film could have still have failed without two capable actresses like Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis.

I generally love the acting of both, but for me, both were in the glory moment of their onscreen badassery and daringness, especially Davis.

I was shocked a while ago when I read that Thelma and Louise were initially not going to be made with Sarandon and Davis. I simply can’t imagine any other actresses in the roles.

Sarandon and Davis embody Louise and Thelma for me from the very first scenes they give you a clear picture of who both of these women are and what kind of lives they have.

And they conduct themselves accordingly and slowly and realistically evolve according to that, the woman may act out of character at first glance, but then as you consider their progression it is totally in character.

And these two women and are so fun and entertaining to watch because Sarandon and Davis capture them in a way that’s fully defined without a hint of doubt and hesitation whatsoever.

In a way that lets, you know that these women fully know and are passionate about the characters they’re portraying. It doesn’t feel like either Sarandon or Davis had to force themselves and pull great mental effort to get into the skin of these ladies (while that was probably required).

Both come across not as scripted but as real, precisely because Sarandon and Davis come across as so unforced, effortless, natural and confident in what they are doing, they simply seem to have been completely in their element. For me, they are two of the best written and best acted female characters in cinema ever!

Thelma and Louise were maybe not surprisingly written by a woman Callie Khourie, but directed by someone who you maybe wouldn’t immediately expect, British Ridley Scott, a mostly good director but not really one known for really emotional and highly sensitive films.

So you wouldn’t immediately expect him that when given the chance to direct a film about two female friends, he’d go: Pick me, me, I want to direct it! He probably to some degree was lured by the adrenaline in the film too.

And then there’s of course also the fact that he’s a Brit and that it doesn’t really get much more American than this, yet Thelma and Louise breathe with naturalness so I can only conclude he was, in fact, the right man for the job.

The film has the elements of the coolest action and road movies and big moments, but Scott knew when to slow down and how to handle his camera in the emotional scenes without making them seem unimportant.

But rather shedding more sensitivity on them, really bringing the emotion in them to the front and into the spotlight, and offering a humane insight into female troubles and psychology, you simply see that Scott had respect for his two leading ladies.

Although there’s perhaps a shot of Thelma in a bikini where you could question if it had to be that long, but in his defense, It’s a gorgeous bikini and Davis looked exceptionally lovely in it…

And for me Thelma and Louise is truly a film with impeccable timing and pacing, always sufficiently slow or just fast enough. Perhaps the for me only weak point is those photos after the big, grand finale.

When it comes to the cinematography, Thelma and Louise is one of my all-time favorite films. No matter how many times I’ve seen it, I’m still impressed and in awe each time.

It’s absolutely gorgeously shot and one of those films that you could freeze plenty of times at pretty much any given moment and you could get something worth putting up in a frame.

As I said already in some of my posts I love travel guides and traveling in general. I have three travel guides on the United States alone, why you might wonder since It’s essentially always the same country with the same landscape. Well, each travel guide has different photos of the same landscape and a different style in approaching and introducing you to the country.

I have to at least name Thelma and Louise as one of the films that made me want to go out and buy them, it simply does the landscape the utmost justice and brings it in all It’s natural beauty.

Usually as a European, well at least in my case when watching whatever American road movie, the remark so much space! Is bound to fall at least once.

And Thelma and Louise captures that wide open space, being completely alone on the road feeling to perfection; It’s palpable you feel as though you are in the car.

The film is an ode to the rich, intense colors of the desert and the harsh, blinding light of its sunny and gritty scapes.

But still there’s a perfect balance between the landscape and our two leading ladies neither is given more importance, throughout the ladies are shown on screen in a way that you feel close and connected to them, while at the same highlighting the grandness and drama of some moments.

The soundtrack is for me nothing that special or particularly memorable, sure it has some pleasant and nice to listen to songs. Although it does have some legendary musical moments, that do make it into a unique soundtrack. But when it comes to road movie soundtracks, my heart forever belongs to Easy Rider.

Thelma and Louise are not my favorite film, but it is one of my favorite films to revisit once in a while because I find that there’s always new stuff in there that I never remarked, that could possibly spark debate it is still socially relevant after all this time.

It’s a film I highly respect, It is simply unique in what it does, truly one of a kind, still one of the only really openly and unapologetically feminist films, that deals with “female issues” in a way that’s both sensitive and still an enjoyable ride for both genders.

Anyone can lose themselves in the thrill and the adrenaline of it. And It’s possibly one of the only films that can say it passes the Bechdel tests as it reaches soaring heights, literally whilst flying into an abyss, fucking legendary...

Louise: You robbed the store? You robbed the whole damn store? Thelma: Well, we needed the money. Louise: Oh, shoot! Thelma: It’s not like I killed anybody, for God’s sake! Louise: Thelma!

“I feel really awake. I don't recall ever feeling this awake. You know? Everything looks different now. You feel like that? You feel like you got something to live for now?”

[galleryyuhself]

The Worst Design Of 2016 Was Also The Most Effective

Trump's "Make America Great Again" hat was pervasive, potent, and deeply misunderstood. [Photo: Visions of America/UIG/Getty Images]

DIANA BUDDS 12.16.16 7:00 AM Trump's ubiquitous bright red trucker hat, festooned with "Make America Great Again," is now seared into our collective memory. It was the most hated and most loved symbol of the election, the most comical and the most serious. It was a poorly designed product that turned out to be very strong branding. It was the most misunderstood design of the election—for designers and non-designers alike.

But most of all, it's a lesson about the limitations of "good" design. "No one wants to give [Trump] credit, understandably, because it’s not something that was designed," says Lindsay Ballant, a designer, art director of The Baffler, and adjunct professor at the Maryland College of Art. "It should be something that designers think about. Good design doesn't necessarily mean effective design."

As we move on from the 2016 election and contemplate the role of design in subsequent political campaigns, understanding the difference between good and effective design is imperative.

[Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images] THE HAT'S ORIGINS Trump's slogan itself traces its roots to Ronald Regan's 1980 presidential bid when he ran on a slogan of "Make America Great Again." Trump applied for a trademark of the slogan in 2012, and it became a registered service mark on July 14, 2015. He first wore the hat during a press conference in Laredo, Texas, just nine days later.

There's still some mystery surrounding the hat's genesis. We don't know who designed it, though we do know where it's made: In the Southern California factory of Cali-Fame Hats. (The Trump campaign and Cali-Frame Hats did not respond to requests for comment on who was behind the design.) It's a basic product. More likely than not, someone picked red since it's the color for the Republican party, and basic Times New Roman lettering in white so it would stand out against the cap.

"In a way, the fluke success of that hat was a rejection of 'design thinking' and 'design strategy' as a whole." The New York Times style section called it "an ironic summer accessory" in a September 2015 story. Things would change in the months leading up to the election. The hat took on a life of its own, becoming the subject of memes and parody. It metastasized into a hate symbol and incited violence. It was worn by everyone from an elementary schooler to a Canadian college student and became a free speech flashpoint in both cases.

Expense reports filed to the Federal Election Commission revealed the Trump campaign spent a massive $3.2 million on hats between July 2015 and September 2016. And that sum represents just a fraction of the $15.3 million spent on the collateral category, which includes hats, shirts, and signs. The spending strategy worked, and the hats became ubiquitous.

Yet, when the Trump campaign shared those expense numbers, the media didn't interpret it as a savvy strategy—it was puzzled and amused. The Washington Post called it a data point that captured the weirdness of the election. Esquire wrote the hats off entirely, arguing that they "may well go down as the Trump campaign's only lasting contribution to the political history of the Republic. Laugh, clown, laugh."

It was a joke to many. This rankled documentarian Michael Moore, who saw the jokes and jabs at the hat as the embodiment of a liberal bubble that didn't understand the Middle American voters who the Democrats were trying to court. Moore appeared on the MSNBC show Morning Joe on November 11 and told the hosts exactly why dismissing the hat and laughing at it showed how Democrats and the media didn't understand the true gravity of what the hat symbolized to some voters:

I take no pleasure in calling this [election] five months ago. Someone [on this show] was remarking that the Trump campaign spent more money on ball caps that month than anything else. And you panelists were [laughing] 'ha ha ha ball caps.' I looked at that and thought, 'Wow there’s the bubble right there.' They don’t understand. This is where we're from. This is where I live. And to make fun of [people wearing the hats]? We wear ball caps . . . This is the reason [Middle America] had this anger at the media and this elitist thing. Harvard art history professor Sarah Lewis also perceives the hat as a visual symbol of Trump’s appeal, which was misunderstood. "[It’s] a moment that stuck with me on what signals we ignored that are to do with culture that might have given us an indication about how deeply rooted or how animated the demographic Trump was," she said during a recent WNYC panel, Vision and Justice In Racialized America.

Forest Young, head of design in the San Francisco office of Wolff Olins, tells Co.Design that while the hat is not good design, it is good branding. "Ten years from now, the winning charades team assigned the phrase 'Presidential Election 2016' would have simply mimed the motion of someone putting on a baseball cap," Young says. "The presidential theater here is a play with a single prop . . . Not unlike Yorick’s Skull from Hamlet—the prop of death that symbolically eliminated the differences between people—the illusion of an everyman society was expediently rendered by a billionaire wearing a baseball cap."

To the thousands of people who wore them to Trump's rallies and day in and day out in their cities and towns, the hat was a beacon. It was this election's Hope poster. It didn't make Trump, but it did bolster the persona he was crafting for himself as the candidate for Middle America. He positioned himself as the anti-establishment outsider. It didn't matter than he was a silver-spoon billionaire afforded every privilege. By destabilizing the system through lies, the truth didn't matter.

"It’s memorable—even if the implications of what he is saying is terrible," George Lois told the Los Angeles Times in July 2016. He went on to call the hat "infuriatingly good."

THE ROLE OF "GOOD" DESIGN IN POLITICS The "undesigned" hat represented this everyman sensibility, while Hillary's high-design branding—which was disciplined, systematic, and well-executed—embodied the establishment narrative that Trump railed against and that Middle America felt had failed them. "The DIY nature of the hat embodies the wares of a 'self-made man' and intentionally distances itself from well-established and unassailable high-design brand systems of Hillary and Obama," Young says. "Tasteful design becomes suspect . . . The trucker cap is as American as apple pie and baseball."

So what exactly is the hat? A stroke of calculated genius or pure dumb luck? There’s no cut-and-dry answer. But it raises the question of how much designerati-approved "good" design really matters in an election.

"His people understand clean and sophisticated branding; they just chose not to use it for his campaign." "This campaign was not won or lost on good design—at least not the kind of design most people are interested in talking about," says Matt Ipcar, executive creative director at Blue State Digital and a design leader for both Obama campaigns. Referring to the debates designers usually like to have about typography, composition, and color theory, he adds: "We could just as easily be talking about how the Trump hat was an abject failure and how the Pentagram-designed Hillary logo was perfect."

Hillary's branding originated from a logo by Pentagram. (Michael Bierut oversaw the process as Wikileaks emails show; Bierut himself has declined to speak about the work.) Her campaign hired Jennifer Kinon, a cofounder of the New York-based firm Original Champions of Design, as its design director and tasked Kinon's team to build a comprehensive visual system based on the logo. It had many of the same attributes that made Obama's campaign design successful: clear typography and a polished tool kit that could easily adapt for use on television, the internet, and printed collateral.

Naturally, designers rejoiced at Obama's visual identity. It reinforced how their principles of good design were successful. "Everyone I know agrees that Obama won the design race," wrote critic Steven Heller in Designing Obama, a book about the visual identity of President Obama's campaign. "Whatever the reason, his campaign team knew early on that coordinated graphics were beneficial and this modern typography would signal a change."

While Hillary and Obama were two fundamentally different people—Obama was a relatively unknown, young senator and Hillary is a seasoned politician with a decades-long resume—they took a remarkably similar tack with branding. To voters who wanted a continuation of Obama's policy, Hillary's branding signaled that she would be a successor who would continue the work of her predecessor. Her design team built the campaign visuals to reach—and resonate with—every eligible voter, but it really needed to convince the undecided. In hindsight, it came down to the voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—states where Trump had a razor-thin margin of victory over Clinton but whose electoral votes were enough to carry him to a national win.

"Maybe [designers] got too high on our own supply from [the Obama campaign] because the branding and approach was so different," Ballant says. "It all goes back to the idea that I now understand as the creative class as an extension of the professional class and the bubble that exists . . . we’ve blocked ourselves off and we’re not talking to anyone else outside of that. Or we assume there’s enough of us in that we can prevail and it’s not true anymore."

Ballant reiterates that Obama and Hillary's campaigns were rooted in corporate identity design and points out that corporations aren't very popular right now. "Hillary’s branding felt too corporate," she says. "But that also reflected an entrenched reputation she had to push against. And the design, while very good, unfortunately only served to reinstate that fact, especially when you think of how big of a deal it was when the logo was unveiled. It was treated like a Mastercard, Airbnb, or Uber reveal."

While Trump's sloppy branding and (suggestive) logo were written off by the design community as a sign that his campaign didn't know what they were doing, in hindsight it was likely more deliberate than originally thought.

"It was treated like a Mastercard, Airbnb, or Uber reveal." "Like any good confidence man, Trump was highly aware of his audience’s desires," Ipcar says. "Take a look at trumphotels.com. His people understand clean and sophisticated branding; they just chose not to use it for his campaign. There was a clear decision by Trump or someone on his team to make the campaign look like something completely different. It was easy for me, as a Brooklyn-born creative director, to describe the hat as bad design. But the hat was worn. It was simple, unisex, familiar, and practical during a summer of hot crowded rallies throughout the South. Design-wise, it was lazy and loud, but also deceptively brand-aware and unmistakably Trump—a brash and calculated brand extension for a house whose luxury properties are awash in Gotham, understated bling, and lots of white space."

The 2016 campaign revealed limitations of what "good design" can achieve as a communication tool in a political context. "Good design has an elitist bias, particularly because good design is expensive," Ballant says. The role of designers in a political context when capital-d Design is so suspect is no less important, but it will take some retooling.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR DESIGNERS? In October, Ballant presented a lecture to the AIGA NY, which Matt Ipcar moderated, about what design can and can't do in the context of an election. During her talk, she drew parallels between the presidential campaign and the United Kingdom's "Brexit" vote to leave the European Union, and referenced an article London-based Pentagram partner Marina Willer wrote for Eye. In the piece, Willer expressed guilt about what designers weren't able to accomplish.

It’s not that our industry was silent. Many campaigns were crafted for the Remain camp and many things were said. We created clever campaigns, beautiful campaigns, and funny campaigns, but we created them for each other, myself included. By and large we preached to the converted, when what we needed to do was to give those who were undecided some clarity. To change history we needed to directly speak to those who chose to vote leave by communicating simple information and direct implications. Ballant found herself wondering about what can happen when design isn't overthought or overproduced with the hat as a prime example. "The making of the hat, the actual idea of it, might have come from a brand strategist or it might not of, which is kind of the salient point," she says. "It certainly wasn't a 'design first' strategist or thinker. It didn't come from a team of design experts. It's not slick. Its origin seems spontaneous, not thought out. It seemed like it was a one off made on a whim, without any thought as to how it operated within a larger system, or without any expectations as to what its impact was or what system it built off of. It didn't seem like it came from a pitch deck. It was, like Trump, sheer personality."

It’s an allegory about how to interpret symbols, how to deploy design, and why visual fluency is crucial for everyone. While Ballant is far from calling for a revolt against design systems and style guidelines, she advocates a broader tool kit for designers. "In a way, the fluke success of that hat was a rejection of 'design thinking' and 'design strategy' as a whole," Ballant says. "And designers should really think about that, because we've built a whole economy around that as a practice. We've sold ourselves on the premise that this is how things should be done."

She argues sometimes it might be strategic for designers to ignore instincts about the visual aspects of design—like kerning, typography, and a systematic polished sensibility—and embrace an "undesigned" approach since it might be more relevant or effective in certain situations. "Hillary’s direction was universally praised as good design," Ballant says referring to the sophisticated direction Hillary took. "The pundits were all wrong, the pollsters were wrong, and the design class was wrong, too."

A couple months ago in Central Park, well before the election, I saw three women who were clearly out-of-towners and who looked like they had just come from the Trump store, judging from the crisp Trump shopping bags they had in tow. They were wearing the Make America Great Again caps and, as tourists do, were snapping photos in the park. As I saw it, to them, a pilgrimage to the Trump store was as much of a not-to-miss attraction as Central Park. I, too, underestimated the gravitational pull Trump's hat had to his most fervent supporters, and to voters who were were looking for a candidate who could inspire the type of hope they wanted. While Hillary won the popular vote by a landslide—the latest count puts her at 2.8 million votes over Trump—she just didn't come out ahead in the states where she needed Electoral College votes the most. It was the people who would venture to N.Y.C. to shop at the Trump store that Democrats had to convince, and unfortunately, they weren't able to.

The 2016 election probably wasn't won or lost on a hat or a branding system, but the hat serves as a powerful proxy for how blindsided many were by the forces that led to Trump becoming president-elect. It’s an allegory about how to interpret symbols, how to deploy design, and why visual fluency is crucial for everyone—not just designers—as we process, regroup, and strategize for the next round of elections.

[robinsonmiguel93]

I Want My Ex Back After 1 Year All Time Best Diy Ideas

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Ex Came Back After 3 Months

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How To Ask Your Ex To Get Back Together