Ben Garrison Vs Graphic Design

There has been a war going on – a one man conflict against the basic concepts of decent graphic design. A losing battle fought for the dream that political ideas can be portrayed in a visual medium with any degree of subtlety, or in a way that even makes any sense. This, is the documentary of Mr Ben Garrison’s perilous fight against graphic design.

So, who is Ben Garrison? Ben Garrison is an “artist” that produces “artwork”, in the same way that a nuclear disaster produces lethal radioactive fallout. According to his own website, Ben insists that his work “exposes the incessant lies of the Fake News Media, the corruption of the entrenched Deep State, and the violent attacks of the Radical Left”. He claims that he draws “thought provoking and politically incorrect cartoons”. By the way, I really like how the phrase “politically incorrect” is put in quotes on his site, like that we’re apparently supposed to be shocked that some MAGA crayon-muncher has shitty opinions.

To get an idea of the kind of crackpot we’re dealing with, here’s a few things that Mr Garrison unironically believes:

• The “Deep State”, whatever that even is. From what I gather, the deep state is a bogeyman made up by far-right wierdos to explain why their country is so shit, rather than having a good look in the mirror.
• Anti-vax quackery, despite actually having COVID at one point. Instead, he chose to medicate himself with an anti-parasitic drug, despite Coronavirus being, you know, a virus.
• The supposed stolen election of 2020. I have no idea what evidence there is to even support this claim, other than “my guy didn’t win waaah”.
• The Democratic party are communists. If Joe Biden is a communist, then I’m Donald Duck.

Even if you don’t know who Ben Garrison is, you’ve probably caught one or two of his cartoons floating around over the years, because they’re EVERYWHERE. I have to give credit to the man – he’s got a pretty strong work ethic, being able to crank out cartoons on a regular basis for many years now. Sure, his work is terrible, but that’s besides the point.

There are two main things that characterise a typical Garrison comic: undefendable far-right politics and FUCKING LABELS. I know a decent bit about graphic design, having studied it at one of those SJW-Marxist-Feminazi colleges for a couple of years, but I remember being taught that the key to good graphic design is utilising the art of simplicity and subtlety. This is why corporations will use imagery to advertise something to the masses, rather than writing 5000-word essay on a billboard to sell a new kind of shoe. Evidently, this is an art that is lost on Ben Garrison, or something that he’s decided that’s a Marxist conspiracy to destroy free-speech. It’s not even the horrendous politics of Ben Garrison that annoy me about his cartoons; if you’re going do make propaganda to promote your shitty conspiracy theories, you could at least do it properly, jeez. Maybe Ben is aware of how thick his audience is, so he has to label every tiny detail. This in itself could pose a problem, as there’s a large portion of Garrison’s audience that probably can’t read.

But what baffles me most of all about Ben’s comics, is that despite all the labels and information that’s crammed into each one, I struggle to decipher what they actually mean. It’s possibly because I don’t have the kind of genius brain to properly analyse a Garrison comic, but I’m always confused to what the is message that he’s trying to get across in his work. You would’ve thought that with all the fucking labels on his comics, they’d actually end up meaning something. It’s ironic really: his cartoons are a complete sensory overload, to the point where they come full circle and become completely meaningless. Perhaps that’s why Ben accompanies each cartoon he creates with several paragraphs explaining what the hell is going on, which makes me wonder why even create something in a visual medium to get a point across in the first place. Aren’t the labels enough?

If there’s anything to take away from this, it’s as follows: if you’re trying to utilise the art of subtlety in graphic design, don’t bother. Add labels to your comics, and when you’ve labelled everything, add labels to those labels. The more labels you have, the more gooder you become at graphic design.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this deviation from me constantly talking about Yu-Gi-Oh!, but there’s a new banlist just around the corner, so don’t expect it to last. See you next time!