4 ways the virus has changed our media consumption habits

People are spending more time on websites, more money on gaming, and getting more news from local outlets. Also in this week’s issue:
Notes on campaign design: the AOC slant
The story behind the “OK Boomer” girl in the Bernie shirt
The Statue of Liberty was almost way thicc
Yours,
The Trump campaign is out with attack ads against Biden

The Trump campaign is out with a new ad attacking Joe Biden, claiming the former vice president was soft on China. The ad has a few issues, though, including an inaccurate claim that Biden opposed travel bans on China and an insinuation that Gary Locke, a former governor of Washington and ambassador to China, is a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Yikes.
The ad includes clips of Biden saying nice things about China, but as the Washington Post noted, they’re not all that different from things Trump himself has said about China. Trump has also praised China on its handling of the coronavirus, commended Chinese President Xi repeatedly, and called China transparent.
The Trump campaign has also begun running Facebook ads comparing Biden to Bernie Sanders with a video that says, “they’re more alike than you think, but at least Bernie remembers his positions.”

Screenshots of Trump campaign Facebook ads
The campaign is running 26 versions of the ad, each for less than $100, suggesting they’re A/B testing for the most effective design.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted last week that since going all-virtual on March 13, the campaign has recruited 276,000 new volunteers and done more than 13 million volunteer calls to voters.
Notes on campaign design: the AOC slant

The Center for American Politics and Design noticed an emerging campaign logo design trend and even suggested a possible name for it: the AOC slant.
Like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 campaign logo, these four logos all feature the candidates’ names in an upwards incline, and the similarities don’t end there.
All four candidates — Isiah James, Melquiades Gagarin, Tomas Ramos, and Shaniyat Chowdhury — are young Democrats running from the left against incumbent Democrats in New York City. They were also all endorsed by Brand New Congress, a group launched in 2017 to elect progressives that backed AOC.
Gagarin’s design director Eric Doctor said in a livestream the slant wasn’t an intentional homage to Ocasio-Cortez, but that her campaign’s design has been influential.
“You can see a lot of the choices that her campaign made trickling down to other campaigns in this cycle,” Doctor said. “She definitely wasn’t the first candidate to use upwards slanting type. We’re using upwards slanting. I don’t know that we’re using it because of her necessarily, but that conveys hope.”
4 ways the virus has changed our media consumption habits

Credit: New York Times
Being stuck at home has affected our media habits in all kinds of ways. Here are four:
Spending is up for e-books, news media, music and video streaming, and most of all gaming, according to a New York Times report on how the virus has changed spending habits, based on data from Earnest Research, a credit card and debit card tracking firm.
Websites are back while mobile isn’t seeing as big of a boost. Here’s the change in traffic for some top brands on their sites compared to their apps, according to data compiled by the New York Times:
Facebook: up 27% on its website vs. up 1.1% on its app
Netflix: up 16% on its website vs. up 0.3% on its app
YouTube: up 15.3% on it’s website vs. down 4.5% on its app
Traffic to local and major national media sites is up in a big way while it’s not for partisan news sites:

Credit: The New York Times
People are seeking out funny and familiar content. The TV research firm Magid found searches for funny or fun videos, movies, and TV are up, and about a third of consumers are spending more time with content they already know well, according to Axios.
Subscribe to Yello for the latest news on the culture, branding, and visual rhetoric of politics, delivered each week:
The story behind the “OK Boomer” girl in the Bernie shirt

Probably the most viral Bernie Sanders meme that wasn’t him once again asking for something was a 15-second video of a young woman dancing to an “OK Boomer” song in a cropped Bernie tee.
The video was posted on March 2 to TikTok by user @Neekolul, a 22-year-old Twitch streamer whose first name is Nicole, and then to Twitter where it really blew up, reaching more than 34 million views.
Nicole said she believed the video’s virality was due to its political timing, a mix of it being cute and cringe at the same time, and the fact she repped Bernie but wasn’t a “bro.”
“I saw these girls use the ‘OK, Boomer’ song in response to people who made rude comments about their colored hair, and I was like ‘Oh, with all the political stuff going on—and I just ordered Bernie shirts—why don’t I do that?” Nicole told the video game news site Kataku.
“It was right before the Bernie-Biden debate, and people were voting at the time,” she said. “But I think without really realizing it, I hit this sweet spot. I want to say the gaming community, but really just the internet, likes [a mix of] cute but also cringe.”
Sanders dropped out of the race last week and endorsed Biden on Monday. @neekolul tweeted “#ThankYouBernie ♥️🇺🇸” after he dropped out.
The Statue of Liberty was almost way thicc

Credit: Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps
Recently discovered blueprints and sketches of the Statue of Liberty from its engineer, Gustave Eiffel (you may be familiar with the tower he designed in Paris), show designs of Lady Liberty with broader shoulders and a thicker arm that was slightly more vertical.
A collection of 22 engineering drawings, 12 blueprints, and other documents from Eiffel’s workshop were purchased at an auction by a California map dealer in 2018, according to the Smithsonian. They were so fragile and tightly folded that to open the pages up, they were placed in a humidified chamber.
The only other known blueprint plans of the Statue of Liberty are in the Library of Congress and in a private collection in France.
You can see more images of the drawings and blueprints here.
Shepard Fairey partners with Adobe to honor pandemic heroes

Adobe announced an #HonorHeroes campaign Tuesday that includes a $250,000 donation to Direct Relief, a humanitarian organization that’s working to provide personal protective equipment and medical items to health workers. There’s also a call for art.
Shepard Fairey released the above illustration, titled “Guts Not Glory,” and posted a call for entries for the campaign. Adobe is asking people to use their suite of creative apps to create a portrait of a health worker, first responder, or other essential worker and post it online with an @Adobe tag and the hashtag #HonorHeroes.
Fairey released another piece celebrating medical workers last week. His “Angel of Hope and Strength” poster is available for free through Amplifier Art.
And your fav NASA logo is…

The worm logo. Last week I asked on Yello’s social media accounts if you preferred NASA’s worm or meatball logo and the worm won with about a third of the vote: 67% on Instagram and 63% of Twitter.