With daily attacks on civil liberties by the Trump administration and attacks on individuals by his followers, #RESIST is the rallying cry of decent people across the world. And resisting is the only way some of us are going to get out of this alive.
So when designers want to jump in the fray and contribute their professional skills to the good fight, it’s understandable and even admirable. But like any other fight, if you run into the resistance half-cocked, you end up making a full cock of yourself.
The standards of good design don’t change when designing for doing good.
R4Resist, conceived by Len Stein and executed by Tucker Viemeister, is the latest well-meaning but poorly conceived attempt by a designer to add pretty colors and fonts to a cause they don’t fully understand and fuck it all up in the process.
The goal of the project, in their own words, is:
To visualize and unite the various resistance groups and present the movement a unifying symbol, we propose that resisters wear a triangle ‘R’ badge on their sleeves when protesting — whether immigrants, refugees, or people of every ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or political affiliation, to demonstrate their patriotism in the struggle to preserve American democracy.
These badges look awfully familiar, especially the pink triangle and yellow star, and it’s not just because everything is reminiscent of Nazi Germany these days. These symbols were used in the system of identifiers Nazis forced camp prisoners to wear.
And this is on purpose!
The design and colors of the ‘R’ triangle-shaped badge are derived from Nazi camp emblems prisoners were forced to wear. By co-opting that horrific emblem, we make a powerful protest against the threat of authoritarian rule and visualize the unity of all resisting groups.
This, folks, is where “Let’s brand the Resistance!” goes from silly but good-natured to cruising-the-family-reunion-for-strange levels of fucked up.
Stein and Viemeister are co-opting these symbols—but not from the Nazis, who have been unable to continue running their camps from Hell. They’re co-opting them from communities whose history includes these symbols and those that have done the hard work of reclaiming them as symbols of empowerment.
Gay people, for example, already use the pink triangle as a symbol of protest. In 1987, as gay men were facing stigmatization and death on a global scale, ACT UP adopted it as part of their logo.
These symbols are not Stein and Viemeister’s to redefine.
For instance, the red triangle, which they offer up as a badge of honor for Conservatives who are now willing to admit they made an oopsie, was used by the Nazis to identify social democrats, socialists, trade unionists, communists, and anarchists. We should honor their history with this symbol instead of giving it away as a participation trophy to the political party that got us into this mess.
The purple triangle, assigned to Christians generically in the R4Resist system, was used for Jehovah’s Witnesses and other religious minorities whose commitment to their faith was a source of their resistance to fascism. Not a reason to support it as long as the new führer bans abortions and trans people using public restrooms.
Blue, which in Nazi Germany signified foreign forced laborers and emigrants, is assigned to Democrats in Stein and Viemeister’s system.
They assign black triangles, which Nazis used for “asocial” people such as lesbians and the mentally ill, to…black people, who already have ways of communicating strength in the face of racist power structures, and a lot more experience doing so than Stein or Viemeister.
That’s a whole other flavor in this 7-layer dip of fuckery. Designers assigning symbols to communities of which they are not a part is no more acceptable than their appropriating those symbols in the first place.
Symbols of oppression like the pink triangle are powerful because the community on which they were forced reclaimed them for themselves. Designers like Viemeister don’t have the right to dictate a system of self-identification to oppressed groups.
In trying to contribute to the many movements that make up the resistance, R4Resist claims ownership of them all.
‘R’ is for Resistance. A ‘Badge’ to Unite All Resistance Movements
I don’t know which of the above the groups Stein and Viemeister can rightfully claim membership to, but it’s pretty unlikely they (actually) belong to all of them.
We may all be in this together; but we are not all Black, or LGBTQ, or Immigrants. These identities are tied to experiences, culture, and risks that we can’t all share in because we don’t all live them.
I am anti-racist, I believe Black Lives Matter, but I am not black. To claim otherwise would mean I believe my understanding of racism in America (as a white dude) should carry the same weight as someone who is African American. For a straight, cisgender person to claim that they are LGBTQ would mean they think they understand what it’s like to be a queer person as well as I do.
Bold geometric shapes and punchy color coding may seem at first glance like a clever way to make a statement, but that statement is actually, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
There’s nuance to the concept of “unity” that R4Resist breezes right by on its way to accolades on design blogs written by designers who haven’t thought about it any harder than its creators (looking at you, Steven Heller).
These struggles are not the same, and the stakes are not the same for everybody in the resistance. If your triangle is red-white-and-blue or orange, you can slap on a button for a weekend protest. But Monday morning, you can take it right off. People whose triangles are black, brown, and rainbow in Stein and Viemeister’s system have no choice but to see this thing through. Designers don’t get to tell them how to do it.
Bold geometric shapes and punchy color coding may seem at first glance like a clever way to make a statement, but that statement is actually, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” R4Resist is built on a flawed foundation of cultural appropriation and designer arrogance.
If Stein and Viemeister are really trying to make a difference through design, I recommend they start again and, this time, talk to the people already doing the hard work in the movements they’re trying to promote.
The standards of good design don’t change when designing for doing good. You still need to consider what need your design is actually filling. You need to understand and respect the people who will use your design. And you need to fully understand the implications of what you’re putting into the world.
The stakes are extremely high; the standard to which we hold our work should be, too.
