This is the first issue of the Red Report, a weekly review on taste and trends. This issue is free to read. To comment or request specific coverage, follow @antimofm on Warpcast. If you're looking for design services, you'll find more information here.

Alien Romulus

When Alien premiered in 1979, there was nothing like before and there is nothing like it now.

Giger took primal shapes and symbols and distorted them in ways so alien — yet, somehow so familiar. We can instinctively recognise phallic or vulviform shapes in Xenomorphs, Facehuggers and other creatures.

The movie shows little of it and poorly lit, so consider this your signal to buy Taschen's volume on his work.

The Alien iconography is also, in a way, at home in the current trend away from minimalism and towards whatever cluttercore is.

I'm not a huge fan, but it does feel more alive than the brain-dead minimalism we got used to over the past few years.

Knife by Salman Rushdie

I confess I don’t know much about Rushdie (except for the name of the book that got him in trouble, The Satanic Verses), so I’m excited to read this.

The cover references Lucio Fontana’s “Cuts”, which is what caught my attention in the first place.

Short n' Sweet

There are SO MANY interesting things happening in packaged food & drinks (check out snaxshot.com), and Erewhon is not in that list. I’ve included it here as an admonishment to avoid brain candy and $20 smoothies; there’s much better stuff to see and drink.

However, I have to admit that combination of blue and red has potential, might come back to that.

F-1 Trillion by Post Malone

I don’t like Post Malone, but that cover slaps.

Especially when put in the context of other country album covers, which are really not much to look at. Except this one, whatever is going on there is working.

L’essence de ce qui fait corps diptych
by Théo Viardin

Just browsing Artsy to find something that hit my eye, and this stuff is oddly reminiscing of the Xenomorph, so I feel like it belongs here.

Victoria's Secret new CEO

Victoria’s Secret will host a new show for the first time since they cancelled it, in 2019.

They have a new CEO, Hillary Super, who was appointed by Rihanna herself to run Savage x Fenty (Rihanna’s lingerie brand).

The Victoria’s Secret show was one of the few fashion events watched by men and women. But it was forgettable. Savage is the opposite.

Cocktails

It’s still (it's always?) cocktail season and if you’re looking for unopinionated color pairings and playful visuals, the Absolut ads are a good start. Just look for "cocktail design" on Pinterest.

USDC

With the launch of the acceptusdc.com campaign by Base, I couldn't help but notice how anemic the entire stablecoin imagery is. To be honest, there is no imagery.

In the mind of most people, blockchain and cryptocurrency are a stale, abstract and unappealing concept. It's just numbers and tech. Additional complexity. Money too, in general, is just a number. But it's also part of a visual imaginarium that is just absent from web3.

Banknote design has always been beautiful (with some exceptions): the classic US dollar is as well-crafted, and recognisable, as the new Norwegian notes.

Bringing the world onchain is a goal we all cheer for. But let’s not flatten it at the same time.

Let’s do something about it?