Last time the Republicans had a national convention, New York-based designers Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell couldn’t pass up a chance to protest — only they did so in a medium they’re comfortable with: They reinvented the GOP elephant in 100 different ways. Sockwell distributed the logos — a Pepsi-sponsored GOP elephant, a trunk transformed into a gun aimed back at a soldier’s head, a pachyderm turned into a hunch-backed man with a cane — in a bicycle rickshaw throughout New York.
With another convention in the wings, I contacted the artists to see if they had any updates to their self-published book, GOP 100: Deconstructing Dumbo. While they said the book is still fresh four years later and doesn’t necessarily need updating, they had one: a retitled piece showing an elephant in prison stripes (reminiscent of this year’s convention logo). It’s now called “Larry Craig.”