Illustration by Tala Safié

Our first installment of this column really seems to have struck a chord—or maybe a nerve?—after it debuted last week. We’ve noticed a sharp uptick in tweets about Design Twitter. Yes, it’s all very meta, but it left us wondering: Did you really not already know about Design Twitter? Or are we doing the middle school thing where we’re acting all shruggy and nonchalant even though we’re so self-aware that we’re practically buzzing on the inside? Like, ohhhhh, this tweet? This lil’ thing I wrote about fonts that’s all pointed and wry and will make a handful of people chuckle at the same time that it completely destroys someone else? Oh yeah, I guess that’s, like, a thing.  

Who is Design Twitter, you’d like to know? Is it all of us or none of us? Is it a smoothie made of the blended tweets from trolls and the “design elite” alike? Is the takedowns and the overblown statements of gratitude, all coexisting in one toxic cocktail? Or is it:

Or we can just act like we’re not all doing what we’re all doing:

Well too bad! We’re talking about it! And we know one group that’s really excited (maybe too excited?) about it:

Now that we’re (a little) clearer on who Design Twitter actually is, let’s get to what Design Twitter had to say this week…

When the UK’s conservative party posted an embarrassing pro-Brexit clip that looks and sounds exactly like a trendy party promo, Design Twitter and Music Twitter came together to call out the blatant BS.

Many of the design style’s greatest players and originators chimed in: Hassan Rahim noted the typeface in the Conservatives’ clip is bizarrely similar to the one he created for LuckyMe and Jacques Greene’s debut album, Feel Infinite.

David Rudnick’s response said it all:

And Metahaven reminded everyone that the Conservative party’s hijacking of countercultural aesthetics is nothing new:

The Conservatives responded to the heat by opting for the oldest, most tired trick in the book… the ’ol Comic Sans gag:

*Yawn*

But we should be careful and not simply roll our eyes—what seems like blundering foolishness is indeed carefully planned. It’s not just a coincidence or a new design intern that has spurred the recent posts. Conservatives have brought in a new PR firm known for its shoddy “boomer memes” that resonate with many voters. Retweeting its trendy clip (even while criticizing it) is probably precisely part of the party’s plan: designers with large followings disperse pro-Brexit graphics to young, creative audiences that wouldn’t otherwise see them. Looks like it’s time for us all to reread Metahaven’s Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?

But before you hop off Twitter to start reading an actual book, maybe check out one tweet that we found pretty helpful. Carly Ayres is very good at harnessing the collective energy of the platform into one, crowdsourced mega-thread. This week she did it for design jobs—those looking for one, and those looking to hire for one. If you fall into either of those categories, it’s a good, real-time resource:

And while we’re at it, here’s another good job resource thread courtesy of, yes, Design Twitter.

There are tons of examples of this kind of open reference-sharing on Twitter, and it can be a truly useful tool for breaking down the barriers to entry into the design profession.

It can also just make us lol:

That’s it for this week’s edition. We’ll leave you with this special nugget of Design Twitter to carry with you until next time. (And remember you can always find us in the feed at @AIGAeyeondesign.