The Interface to Society: Fascist Graphic Design and the Second Trump Administration
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Within recent years, increasing academic inquiry has been made into whether Donald Trump and his policies can be described as fascist, often comparing his administration to well-established fascist regimes as references. Less frequently mentioned in this discourse, however, are the crucial roles of graphic design and visual language each government uses to articulate its policies. This paper compares the most influential fascist visual language of the Nazis during World War II to the visual language of the second Trump administration to analyze the importance of a harmonizing design and policy in constructing a fascist government. Specifically, it looks at the Trump-established National Design Studio and its impact on the American visual language through advancements in web design, social media, and generative artificial intelligence.
Hello! I'm a third-year architecture student at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, pursuing additional majors in Religious Studies through the Department for Religion and Jewish Studies through the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies.
My research is focused on the critical role of design in history and its relationship to contemporary applications of design for state control. I am incredibly passionate about the future of design and how new frontiers can be assessed by analyzing the past.
