Sep 1, 20212 min read

Portfolio: Alex Jones' Modest Proposal

If you have been browsing around in the Low Humour section of my portfolio, you will have noticed that quite a few of the designs there are in some way inspired by the podcast Knowledge Fight and their perpetual holding-to-account of Alex Jones. One of my goals is to devise a t-shirt/merch design that the show will adopt as official Knowledge Fight merchandise. This is a challenging goal, but a worthy one for a few reasons. Of course, there is my deep appreciation for the podcast, but at a more practical level making official KF merch would be great exposure. There is a sizable group on Facebook dedicated to the show, and they have been a great source of feedback as I come up with ideas and post some of my efforts to the group.

Almost all of the KF designs I come up with are inside jokes based on things the hosts, Dan and Jordan, have said, running bits and whatnot. I consider such designs as being based on the intellectual property of Dan and Jordan, and so I don't post them on Redbubble for sale. Some designs, though, like this one, are fair game because they are based on things Alex himself has said and which are widely known in popular culture. The fact that Alex spoke at length about how, post-apocalypse, he would never let his daughters starve and would, instead, kill and butcher his neighbours for food is an example. This rant includes the now pretty famous quote, "I will eat your ass!" A little less famously, Alex's next show tried to capitalize on the incredulous buzz his rant had created on social media by claiming that, actually, he was being satirical in the same vein as Johnathan Swift, and that this was his version of "A Modest Proposal."

"Alex Jones' Modest Proposal" gave the opportunity to bring together some of the skills I have been recently honing and apply them to the same piece. Most notably, transforming Alex's face from the source photo into a line drawing that worked with the Swift engraving was particularly challenging, involving many layers. Matching the text's font, spacing and layout was another challenge. I think I pulled it off, though, and I am very happy with the results.