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Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign is remembered a decade on for the exclamation point in its “Jeb!” logo, but Jesse Jackson’s campaign actually used the punctuation 28 years before him. Jackson, the civil rights activist who died Tuesday at the age of 84, ran for president twice, in 1984 and 1988. At the 1988 Democratic National Convention, his supporters held red signs that said “Jesse!” in white. Democratic National Convention, Atlanta, 1988. [Photo: Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images] Jackson came in second in the 1988 primary with nearly 30% of the vote against the party’s nominee Michael Dukakis, and since then, candidates from Bush to 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, have used the punctuation mark in their logos to give their names some added emphasis. An attendee holds a campaign sign while listening during a campaign event for Jeb Bush in Charleston, South Carolina, 2016. [Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Though Jackson never held political office, the visual brand of his historic campaigns still resonates today for standing out in a sea of sameness. A protege of Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson was the founder of the civil rights nonprofit Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) when he announced his campaign in 1983 without any experience in elected office and became the first Black presidential candidate for a major party since Shirley Chisholm. [Image: United States Library of Congress] Jackson’s exclamation mark logo was far from the only logo used in support of his presidential campaigns in a time before standardized, consistent branding was expected for political campaigns. He campaigned in serifs and sans serifs, and sometimes in bright yellow, a color that signaled a break from the standard red, white, and blue color palette of U.S. politics at the time. His campaign used slogans like “Now is the Time” and “Keep Hope Alive.” During a speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Jackson explained his idea of the nation as a rainbow, a symbol that became associated with his candidacy and advocacy. “Our flag is red, white, and blue, but our nation is a rainbowred, yellow, brown, black, and whiteand were all precious in Gods sight,” he said. [Photo: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture] That message, along with Jackson’s push to build a “rainbow coalition” that transcended racial and class lines, inspired rainbow-themed buttons and ephemera. Buttons depicted rainbows that were red, white, and blue
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E-Commerce
A new 3D-printed construction technique turns corn into a novel building material. Corncretl is a biocomposite made from corn waste known as nejayote that’s rich in calcium. It’s dried, pulverized, and mixed with minerals, and the resulting material is applied using a 3D printer. [Photo: Dinorah Schulte/Manufactura] This corn-based construction material was made by Manufactura, a Mexican sustainable materials company, and it imagines a second life for waste from the most widely produced grain in the world. The project started as an invitation by chef Jorge Armando, the founder of catering brand Taco Kween Berlin, to find ways he could reintegrate waste generated by his taqueria into architecture. A team led by designer Dinorah Schulte created corncretl during a residency last year in Massa Lombarda, Italy. “The material combines recycled nejayote derivatives with limestone and Carrara marble powder, connecting pre-Hispanic construction knowledge from Mexico with material traditions from northern Italy,” Schulte tells Fast Company. [Photo: Dinorah Schulte/Manufactura] Growing momentum for clean cement alternatives Many sustainable materials studios are researching concrete alternatives. And while corncretl is just in the prototyping stage, food waste has been tested as a potential building material more broadly. Researchers at the University of Tokyo made a construction material it said was harder than cement in 2022 out of raw materials like coffee grounds, powered fruit and vegetable waste, and seaweed. Last year, researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology developed a rammed earth material encased in cardboard, which eliminated the need for cement completely, and Manufactura experimented with building materials made from coffee too. Designers have turned to 3D printers to build everything from train shelters to houses, and developing alternative materials to print with could lead to cheaper, more durable, and more sustainable construction methods. [Photo: Dinorah Schulte/Manufactura] After Schulte’s team developed corncretl, they then moved to practical application, prototyping three panels for modular construction using a Kuka robotic arm. “The project employs an internal infill structure that allows the 3D-printed wall to be self-supporting, eliminating the need for external scaffolding during fabrication,” Schulte says, and the geometry of the system was inspired by terrazzo patterns found in the Roman Empire, particularly Rimini, Italy, where the team visited. [Photo: Dinorah Schulte/Manufactura] “During a visit to the city museum, we were struck by the expressive curved terrazzo motifs, which became a starting point for translating historical geometries into a contemporary, computationally designed 3D-printed wall, culturally rooted yet forward-looking,” she says. [Photo: Dinorah Schulte/Manufactura] Corn, or maize, is native to Mexico, and the country produces 27 million metric tons of it annually, according to the Wilson Center, a think tank. Finding an alternative use for nejayote, then, could then turn a waste stream from a popular food into the basis for building physical structures. If the byproduct from cooking tortillas proves to be one such source, taquerias could one day find themselves in the restaurant and construction businesses.
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E-Commerce
Trump’s latest plans for a White House annex could subtly reshape the path around the South Lawn, and its resulting irregularity says a lot about the Administration’s capacity for design nuance. The latest renderings for a new proposed building on the site of the demolished East Wing were briefly posted to the National Capital Planning Commission website on February 13, and then deleted. The plans call for a ballroom much bigger than the rest of the White House. So big, in fact, that it ruins the shape of the South Lawn driveway. [Image: NCPC] Under the proposal, a new garden would cover the site of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which was demolished alongside the East Wing last year, while a roughly 22,000-square-foot ballroom would jut out ever so slightly into the path of the looping driveway that encircles the most famous backyard in the U.S. [Image: NCPC] The elongated oval drive would then have to be pushed in on one side to accommodate the footprint of the enlarged ballroom, like the side view of an spherical exercise ball under pressure. Rather than maintain the intentional harmony of the current drive, the proposed path turns the South Lawn into a deferential design afterthought that makes way for Trump’s dream ballroom. In the grand scheme of Trump’s presidencyand the White House’s overall facadea rerouted driveway is a minor thing. But the effect on this subtle element reflects the lengths his team will go to shoehorn his design ideas into reality, even if it means upsetting core design principles like balance elsewhere. Gold-obsessed, unless it’s the golden ratio Of course, nothing about Trump’s proposed ballroom has ever been symmetrical, nor have any of his other White House design projects been particularly subtle. He started by tearing out the Rose Garden and putting a car lot-sized flag poll on the North Lawn and then got to work tearing down portions of the White House before anyone could okay it or say no. Trump replaced the original architect for the ballroom in December after clashes over its size. A National Park Service report last year found the plans would “disrupt the historical continuity of the White House grounds and alter the architectural integrity of the east side of the property.” [Image: NCPC] The latest proposed elevations for the ballroom, which were designed by Shalom Baranes Associates, a Washington, D.C., architectural firm, are more than twice the size of the since-demolished East Wing. The drafted design gives the White House complex the look of a male fiddler crab, which has one claw that’s bigger than the other. The planned ballroom dwarfs the West Wing in sheer footprint, which would make the overall visual balance of the White House grossly asymmetrical upon its completion. Heightwise, however, the building appears in the renderings to rise about as tall as the Executive Mansion itself, and the proposal takes great pains to show that it won’t be visible from various vantage points in Washington, D.C., like from the Jefferson Memorial or from the U.S. Capitol steps facing northwest. The building is designed with a neoclassical facade, Corinthian columns, and a wide staircase entrance, matching the call for classical architecture Trump asked for in an executive order. [Image: NCPC] Fine arts fueled by cash, but not the arts Construction of the ballroom will be paid for by corporate donors, raising thorny ethical questions for a president who once claimed to “drain the swamp.” Two-thirds of known corporate donors to the ballroom have received $279 billion in government contracts over the past five years. Some donors, including Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and T-Mobile are facing federal enforcement actions, according to a review from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. [Image: NCPC] Earlier this month, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found that many donors failed to disclose their contributions in lobbying disclosure filings. Trump has taken steps to remove friction or opposition to his plans to build the new building. Last October, he fired every member of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts board, the agency that would have reviewed his construction plans. Now, his 26-year-old executive assistant Chamberlain Harris, who has no background in the arts, is set to be named to commission Thursday, according to The Washington Post.
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E-Commerce
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