CPC: Week 7, Semester 2

Graphic design is my passion

Despite campaign pages having only been up for under a week, things are starting to MINT up (ha, ha). Both Heat for Honi and Mint for Honi are hedging their bets on a bold new design in order to seduce the humble punter. Unfortunately, neither design is much to write home about.

One would expect that a name like Heat creates ample opportunity for visual puns and a wild reddish-orange colour palette. Looking at the branding they’ve gone with on their Facebook DPs, you would be sorely mistaken. Sure, we get some chillies stuffed in a mouth, but we also get boxing gloves, popcorn, and a tennis racket, making viewers do some serious mental gymnastics to understand the link to their name.

Mint have gone for a less obscure approach, and instead have made everything look like a tic-tac. As DP change followed DP change, it became clear that many of them are weirdly proud of having never read Honi before. How this makes them also qualified to claim that they hate the paper remains a mystery, even to us omniscient editors.

So much for the tolerant centre

As the less experienced ticket in the race, Mint have also been quick to brush up on their editing skills in time for the campaign. On Friday, they made a post saying “REGIONAL STUDENTS ARE GETTING A RAW DEAL FROM HONI SOIT” in capitals reminiscent of your grandmother who’s just learning to text. Their research method, which involved typing the word ‘regional’ into our website’s search bar, was similarly geriatric, leading to them claim “it has been 5 years since Honi decided to report on a regional issue”.

This is entirely false, as a number of commenters, including past Honi eds and Heat for Honi member Cameron Gooley, were quick to point out. They linked numerous examples from the past few years — some their own articles — until Mint deleted their post, without any other acknowledgement of their error. Someone also posted to their page, but that post has since been removed. As a side note, searching ‘rural’ returns nine pages of results — better luck next time, Mint 😉

Too many cooks cook the video

Sunday night saw the drop of the first video of the Honi election too, courtesy of Heat for Honi. In a continuation of their abstract riffing on the hot theme, the video consisted of a montage of various ticket members undertaking normal kitchen activities like drinking tea, burning candles, and putting one’s head in a gas oven. So far, so wholesome.

The video prompted a comment suggesting they should perhaps add a content warning, which said, “I’m not really sure what’s cute or funny about sticking your fingers in the toaster or shoving your head in the oven.” In response, they apologised and edited their caption to say, “This video may cause seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy, and depicts scenarios where people misuse dangerous appliances. Don’t try this at home.” Truly enlightening advice.

All I want for Hackmas is You(r preferences)

It’s the silly season. DPs are a-changing. The smell of a-frames fills the air, and preference deals are in the making, though not for all the presidential hopefuls. Brendan Ma (running as an independent despite his Liberal Party membership) has been left out in the cold, and told Honi he wouldn’t be preferencing anyone.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the political spectrum, Grassroots candidate Imogen Grant told Honi she had a ‘2 for 2’ preference deal with Labor candidate Bella Pytka — i.e. they will direct their second preferences to each other. Seems like a run-of-the-mill arrangement; however, in a statement that was definitely not scripted by her one of her three campaign managers, Pytka told Honi, “we will be working with other progressive teams to ensure a progressive SRC that works for students”. We can presume that by ‘progressive teams’, Pytka is ruling out a deal with the Ma, although given Stand Up’s illustrious history on that count, one shouldn’t count their chickens before they hatch. When asked to confirm if there was a ‘2 for 2’ deal with Grant, Pytka seen-zoned us. Weird to discover some people actually have other things to do on Sunday nights.