From Trump to Brexit: how bad graphics triumphed over slick design

Forget flash campaigns. Political battles are now won with knocked-up placards, beermats, hats and memes. And museums are scrambling to scoop them up

'Slogans in nice typefaces won't save the human races." So says a huge banner in London's Design Museum, the slogan leaping from the wall in quite a nice typeface of bold 3D yellow sans serif letters on a bright scarlet background. Graphic design might not provide salvation from the world's woes, but it can certainly try, as a new exhibition of the last decade in politicised posters, placards and memes shows in kaleidoscopic colour.

Titled Hope to Nope, the show surveys the visual products of the tumultuous 10 years since Shepard Fairey made his Hope poster for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. It's a decade that has seen more than its share of political turmoil, with the global financial crisis, the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, oil spills, terrorist attacks, Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump - whose detractors responded by riffing off Fairey's image with the Trump Nope meme.