Suns out, guns out: In 2022 campaign merch doesn’t need sleeves
Plus: How to brand civil rights education
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Suns out, guns out: In 2022, campaign merch doesn’t need sleeves
How to brand civil rights education
The Ukrainian postage stamp commemorating the soldiers who told the Russian warship to go f**k itself is out
Suns out, guns out: In 2022 campaign merch doesn’t need sleeves
Philadelphia 76ers megafan and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is out with a new line of basketball-themed merch for his gubernatorial campaign in the Keystone State.
The Democrat’s new Court Collection was designed by Studio Gradients, the creative agency made up of Biden 2020 campaign alumni that designed Shapiro’s visual branding when he announced his candidacy last year.
Studio Gradients founder Robyn Kanner said the idea for the collection came after connecting with Shapiro over their shared love of basketball during their first call.
“Court Collection was basically our way of doing something that was a little bit out there and different and really felt authentic,” Kanner told me. “When you venture off onto something like this you have to make sure it fits the candidate.”
To create the line, Studio Gradients explored influences including the Sixers and the NBA’s City Edition jerseys, and they played with different fonts and a neon yellow and black design before settling on the finished products.
The line includes long- and short-sleeve tees, a hat, and a $55 Shapiro jersey. Items feature a keystone-shaped basketball icon topped with two stars for Pennsylvania’s status as the second state in the Union.
Shapiro has promoted the line on social media with lots of sports puns, and he said the line was released in “the spirit of getting off the sidelines and in the game this Primary Election season.”
Basketball jerseys are a rarity in the campaign merch world, but former President Barack Obama’s campaign released one in 2012.
How to brand civil rights education
To design the website for Good & Common, a civil rights education resource founded by California attorney DeWitt Lacy, San Francisco design studio Landscape emphasized clarity and urgency with a black-and-white design, orange accents, and bold type.
The site lists 12 civil rights topics, including filming police, protesting, and search and seizure, and each offers users a video and Q&A. Each topic lays out your rights, how to safely handle situations with police, and what to do if your rights are violated.
The project, first reported in Print, was part of Landscape’s pro-bono initiative to support Black-owned businesses, and the agency worked with Lacy to build a site that was “equal parts urgent and optimistic.”
“I have long hoped to develop a way to educate more people about their civil rights,” Lacy said in a statement. “Fortunately for me, Landscape had the ability to transform my idea into action and do just that.”
The site uses the sans serif Trade Gothic Next and the serif Caslon, and it was inspired by civil rights posters, pamphlets, and other ephemera, according to Landscape.
The site encourages safely filming law enforcement as a way to promote accountability, and to voice concerns in court about your rights being violated. Lacy said he believes Good & Common will save lives.
The Ukrainian postage stamp commemorating the soldiers who told the Russian warship to go f**k itself is out
Not only is the stamp out, but the warship the Ukrainian soldiers told to go f**k itself is now at the bottom of the Black Sea.
Ukrposhta, Ukraine’s postal service, released the stamp last week, a month after announcing it, and right after the ship — the missile cruiser Moskva — had been sunk. Ukraine said the ship was struck by Ukrainian missiles, while Russia claimed a storm and fire onboard took it down, according to the BBC.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared a photo posing with the stamps on social media and said the phrase “Russian warship, go f**k yourself” had become “a symbol of the indestructibleness of Ukrainian defenders.”
“Use and remember that the ‘Russian warship’ always has only one direction,” he wrote.
Ukrainian artist Boris Groh designed the stamp after beating out 19 other entries, and he’s out with new work released last month titled “Sunflowers.”
The piece shows a busted Russian tank in a field of Ukraine’s national flower growing from the bodies of dead soldiers. It’s an apparent allusion to the Ukrainian woman who told Russian soldiers to put sunflower seeds in their pockets so flowers would grow after they die.
Can design bring peace on Earth? Our nation’s design museum would like to know. Read about it here >>.
The sunflowers one is poignant, but makes me so, so sad.
Congrats on the Substack recognition.