How we chose this week’s image
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Our cover story this week describes how, regardless of what happens in America’s election next month, Donald Trump’s ideas will win. Kamala Harris has quietly adopted many of the policies that Mr Trump espoused when he was president. On trade, she would keep, in modified form, most of the tariffs from Mr Trump’s first term. On immigration, she has grown harsher, endorsing the most conservative bipartisan reform proposal this century. On energy, she has dropped her previous opposition to fracking. On China, she has been part of an administration that talked more diplomatically than Mr Trump, but was tougher in practice.
None of this means that the stakes in November are small. Far from it. Leave aside for a moment the candidates’ characters and attitudes to institutions, though these matter immensely. On policy, Mr Trump has grown more extreme since he left office. He now promises stiffer tariffs, more reckless fiscal policies and mass deportations. But what is striking is the degree to which he has made both parties move in his direction, setting the terms of the debate. Policy in America has become thoroughly Trumpified.
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One way to illustrate this was to put Ms Harris into one of Mr Trump’s trademark baggy suits. Our picture wizards did a fine job of making it look as if she’s really wearing it. As a variation on this theme, we added an absurdly big red tie to a photo of Ms Harris in her normal clothes. Many of us thought these images were fun, but there was a danger they might be misunderstood. Clothes are very personal. Some readers might think we were suggesting that the two candidates’ personalities were similar. We don’t think that.
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To emphasise policy rather than personality, we tried an image of Ms Harris with an elephant’s head. The Republican symbol suggests that the Democrats’ standard-bearer has poached ideas from the MAGA wish-list. But it is a trifle grotesque, and an elephant head on a human might make some readers think we’re clumsily alluding to Ms Harris’s Indian heritage. Scratch that one. A donkey-elephant hybrid removes Ms Harris from the picture entirely, and symbolises the startling overlap between the two parties’ platforms.We riffed on this idea some more. A donkey with a Trump tie and baseball cap looked suitably incongruous. A cap with a logo that crosses “Kamala” with “MAGA” was wonderfully simple and eye-catching. But it lacked drama.Our next idea was to put Ms Harris in the foreground, delivering a speech from a lectern, casting a “shadow” that looks like Mr Trump. This deftly conveys the notion that he has influenced his rival’s policies, and his jabbing finger lends a sense of drama and aggression. However, the shadow is so lifelike that some readers might think the image portrays the two candidates debating on a stage, photographed from the side. To make it clearer, we put a Trump reflection below Ms Harris. This was a powerful image, if a little eerie.Perhaps, though, it made sense to focus more squarely on Mr Trump. Our main message is that his sway over American policy has been extraordinary, for a man who has never won the popular vote and probably never will. So we put his face on the Statue of Liberty, with an expression making clear to the huddled masses that they are not welcome. And we looped a red necktie around the Capitol, hinting at the python-like strength of his grip.Since his influence extends far beyond Washington, DC, permeating every state in one form or another, we thought of Trumpifying the American flag. On the left, Old Glory with ties for red stripes. On the right, an Economist cover mock-up with the same flag, hanging down vertically. That a simple accessory worn by millions of men instantly calls to mind just one of them is evidence of Mr Trump’s remarkable hold over the world’s imagination.![]()
Yet this was the idea we liked best. We’re far from the first to apply creative licence to the Washington Monument. Hollywood often uses it as an icon of America; on screen it has been crushed by an earthquake, scaled by Spider-Man and toppled by malevolent Martians. We replaced it with a red tie, standing proudly above the reflecting pool, as if gazing admiringly at its own image. We added a headline, with the tie bursting through it. For the final design, we moved the lens a bit closer, and chose a bluer sky. And there we have it: a big, beautiful cover evoking a lamentable trend.On a separate note, this week’s cover is the first to display our new logo, using a typeface created specially for The Economist by Henrik Kubel. Compared with the previous design from 1991, the letters are now softer and more fluid. The change is subtle, but our new logo was designed to look as good on screens as it does on our printed cover.
