Team USA’s Opening and Closing ceremony uniforms are good, actually
Plus: The Biden campaign is hitting Trump’s criminal conviction with this $50 million ad buy
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
The Biden campaign is hitting Trump’s criminal conviction with this $50 million ad buy
The Justice Department is accusing Adobe of “dark pattern” design to trick consumers
Team USA’s Opening and Closing ceremony uniforms are good, actually
Scroll to the end to see: how Times New Roman would dress if it was a model 🔠
The Biden campaign is hitting Trump’s criminal conviction with this $50 million ad buy
President Joe Biden’s campaign is out with a new ad titled “Character Matters” focused on former President Donald Trump’s criminal convictions. It’s the campaign’s first TV ad to hit Trump for his 34 felonies and it’s part of a $50 million ad buy through the end of June that the campaign announced Monday.
“In the courtroom we see Donald Trump for who he is,” the narrator says. “He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and he committed financial fraud. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s been working, lowering health care costs and making big corporations pay their fair share. This election is between a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself and a president who’s fighting for your family.”
The ad will run on cable TV and in battleground states, the Biden campaign said.
“It’s a stark contrast, and it’s one that matters deeply to the American people,” Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said in a statement to the Associated Press. “And it’s why we will make sure that every single day we are reminding voters about how Joe Biden is fighting for them, while Donald Trump runs a campaign focused on one man and one man only: himself.”
The focus on Trump is a change from 2020, when Biden’s campaign largely ignored him in TV ads. That year, Trump was mentioned in just 2% of Biden campaign TV ads, compared to 95% so far this year, according to data from AdImpact.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News the ad focused on “issues irrelevant to the everyday lives of the American people.”
“Lighting another $50 million on fire to tout yet another irrelevant issue will not change the trajectory of this race and trick Americans into thinking that Crooked Joe Biden’s presidency has been anything other than an unmitigated disaster,” Leavitt said.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign hasn’t been on the air since February 27. That drought ends next week, though. The Trump campaign placed its first TV ad spend of the general election for next Thursday, the day of the first presidential debate, for CNN in battleground states, according to Medium Buying, a Republican ad buying company.
The Justice Department is accusing Adobe of “dark pattern” design to trick consumers
Canceling your Adobe subscription can be confusing and pricey, and a new U.S. Justice Department suit argues the company deceptively designed it to be that way.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Adobe Monday that accuses the software company of violating the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA), meant to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive practices, and from being charged for transactions that aren’t clearly disclosed.
Attorneys for the Justice Department allege in the suit that Adobe hides the cancellation terms of its “annual, paid monthly” subscription “in fine print and behind optional text boxes and hyperlinks” during the sign-up process, and only clearly discloses those terms when users try to end their subscription. That makes the company’s sign-up process a “powerful retention tool” that traps consumers in subscriptions they no longer want, according to the Justice Department.
“For years, Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms,” the suit says. “Adobe fails to adequately disclose to consumers that by signing up for the ‘Annual, Paid Monthly’ subscription plan, they are agreeing to a year-long commitment and a hefty early-termination fee that can amount to hundreds of dollars.”
In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, attorneys lay out Adobe’s enrollment flow and note that the cancellation process is purposefully cumbersome. Users are required to login again to their Adobe accounts and navigate through multiple pages and pop-ups when they try to cancel, including a mandatory feedback page that requires users to enter a reason for canceling and fails to inform them that the cancellation process hasn’t yet been completed. And good luck trying to contact customer support.
“Subscribers who have attempted to cancel via customer service have encountered several obstacles that impede or delay their attempts to cancel,” the suit reads. “Many subscribers attempting to cancel via phone or chat have been subjected to a time-consuming and burdensome process.”
Bringing dark patterns to light
The suit also brings to light “dark patterns,” or deceptive interface patterns, that trick users into taking unintended actions. In the case of Adobe, the Justice Department alleges the company is using the tactic to manipulate users into signing up for expensive subscriptions that are also designed to be hard to break. Broadly, manipulative tactics like the ones alleged by the Justice Department are becoming a common sight online: a 2019 Princeton study found instances of dark patterns on more than 11% of websites.
The suit filed against Adobe is one of many the Justice Department has filed in recent years, as dark patterns become an increased priority for investigation. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Amazon’s Prime sign-up process of being similarly deceptive in a lawsuit that claimed the online retailer enrolled consumers into the program without their consent and made it hard to cancel. A trial is set for June 2025.
The FTC released a report on dark patterns in 2022, which focused on four common tactics, including misleading consumers and disguising ads, making it difficult to cancel subscriptions or charges, burying key terms and junk fees, and tricking consumers into sharing data, and provided examples of their use. According to the report, the FTC has taken action against CreditKarma, LendingClub, and Vizio, also for their alleged use of dark patterns.
The increasing prevalence of dark patterns shows just how easily — and how subtly — design strategies can evolve from “user-centered” to business-centered, prioritizing user flows that are designed to encourage maximum profit over maximum transparency. In short, these design practices are bad for consumers but good for a company’s bottom line. That is until the federal government argues that they break the law.
The suit against Adobe says the company’s enrollment practices ”have generated frequent complaints from subscribers,” including to the Better Business Bureau, on social media, and on Adobe’s community support pages. If the company doesn’t face consequences, the Justice Department says, it’s “likely to continue to injure consumers and harm the public interest.”
And it seems the government is increasingly interested in cracking down on this design problem. “More and more companies are using digital dark patterns to trick people into buying products and giving away their personal information,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said back in 2022, adding that their cases “send a clear message that these traps will not be tolerated.”
Team USA’s Opening and Closing ceremony uniforms are good, actually
Ralph Lauren unveiled the Team USA Opening and Closing ceremony uniforms this week for the 2024 Paris Games, and reviews were mixed.
For the Opening Ceremony on July 26, America’s Olympians will be sporting a single-breasted wool blazer with red and white tipping, a striped Oxford shirt, tapered denim jeans, and suede buck shoes, according to Ralph Lauren. Then 16 days later for the Closing Ceremony they’ll wear moto-style jackets that are giving Britney Spears as Grand Marshall of the 2001 NASCAR Winston Cup Series Pepsi 400 and retail for $998.
As a Canadian, Slate called Ralph Lauren’s work a “sartorial travesty,” while Now This said the uniforms “are simply not beating the ‘Americans have no culture’ rumors. The Washington Post Style section, which I revere, said the Opening Ceremony kit was both “behind the times and struggling to define itself.” With all due respect, I think these uniforms rock.
Ralph Lauren has put America’s Olympians in blazers for every summer Games since becoming the official outfitter for Team USA in 2008, and they’ve never missed. For the 2024 Games, though, their blazers are especially preppy. And why shouldn’t they be? This is for Paris.
Pairing blazers with denim is a choice, and an amusing one at that. Like the American models and designers who traveled to France for “The Battle of Versailles,” the legendary 1973 charity fashion show, Ralph Lauren’s uniforms manage to dress for the fashion capital of the world while still retaining their Americanness in denim and Evel Knievel formal. These uniforms scream “‘Merica,” but make it fashion. Gold medal for you, Ralph Lauren.
Have you seen this?
Navigating a fractured media landscape. I spoke with Josh Klemons on the Hello Merge Tag podcast about campaign logos, political design, and how political campaigns are navigating a fractured media environment. [Hello Merge Tag]
Trump raised so much last month he erased Biden’s cash advantage. Trump’s fundraising while he was on trial in New York, punctuated in the final days when he was convicted, was enough to surpass the incumbent Democrat when it comes to campaign cash. [Politico]
What’s eating Jack Schlossberg? Is he crazy? Or just a fox? After posting a series of controversial videos, JFK's only grandson tells T&C it's all part of a big plan. [Town & Country]
In a visual age, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is making himself into the 51st star. By loading up on flags and hugging and kissing the flag, Trump is “trying to equate himself with patriotism and nationalism.” And his dressing to match is “the most visual representation of that.” [New York Times]
London Tory MP candidate forced to withdraw campaign leaflets after police complaint. A southeast London candidate included a photo with a police superintendent in flyers, and the police force protested that the image was used without their knowledge and against electoral rules because it suggested the high ranking officer was backing the Conservative candidate at the general election. [Evening Standard]
This highly secretive super PAC is raising millions to fight Trump’s social media machine. Future Forward USA, a super PAC backed by tech giants like Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and LinkedIn founder Reed Hoffman, is raising millions of dollars to try to solve a problem vexing Democrats: how to compete with Republican Donald Trump’s social media machine that spits out a wall of viral videos. [Fast Company]
Fonts as fashion. Model Wisdom Kaye dressed as fonts like Times New Roman, Impact, Courier, and Futura.
You have one unread message from Biden and Trump. Artificial intelligence chatbots are popping up across the web, and their design has influenced the look of the latest fundraising tools on the Biden and Trump campaign websites. [Yello]
History of political design
“Maura Healey for Governor” tee (2022). Healey, the Massachusetts governor who became the first openly lesbian governor elected in U.S. history, used the typeface Quincy in her campaign logo.
A portion of this newsletter was first published in Fast Company.
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