Poster Children

In "Rendering Fear: The Graphic Design of Al Qaeda," Cliff Kuang argues that jihadist organizations have embraced many aspects of the Photoshop aesthetic and Americanized, corporatized, and transnational conglomerated media compositions.

Al Qaeda and the myriad groups that seek to emulate it are evil, without question. But they also happen to be modernizing their public face, at break-neck speed, translating their message to the Web and to magazines. What they're running into--in addition to annoyances with Photoshop and Pagemaker--are stereotypically Western middle-management questions of marketing and tone. And you can see that tension in the design of their materials.

Thanks to Jenny Cool for the link!