Donald Trump has unveiled a new design for Air Force Ane in a segment filmed with ABC News. He offset teased the concept terminal July, insisting that it would be rendered in red, white, and blue, and look "more than American" than the blueprint in employ today. Indeed, the images Trump shared with ABC News show a apartment red, white, and blue pigment task, with the American flag on the tail. Part of a $three.9 billion plan to revamp the presidential plane, the new look may make it in 2024, pending approving from the House Military Committee. 1 reporter described Trump'south vision as "patriotic." Except one problem. It'southward exactly the contrary.

The Air Strength One blueprint we have today is not simply more beautiful than Trump'due south version; it's a better representation of American design, and possibly even America itself.

Air Forcefulness I'south livery (a fancy term for the exterior decals of a plane) was the vision of industrial designer Raymond Loewy. A war veteran and an immigrant, he contributed to many of the celebrated designs that remain part of this nation's collective history. He was built-in in France and served for the country during World State of war I, immigrating to the United States in 1919. Originally working as a mode illustrator for Harper's and Faddy, he made his mode into industrial design and designed all sorts of things, from logos to office article of furniture. But transportation was an ongoing passion. He designed trains, cars, and buses for brands similar Studebaker and Greyhound, always with an middle toward how graphic design and industrial design mixed.

You can see this with the GG1 electric locomotive. He didn't design this entire train. Only he gave the hulking, 475,000-pound locomotive a sense of agility and grace, replacing its rivets with smooth welds and giving it a flowing speed line on its side to draw out the engine's contours. Another example is the GX-seven prototype motorbus he helped develop for Greyhound. What could have been a big steel rectangle is instead a bit Googie, a bit modernistic, a bit maritime, and a scrap anthropomorphic. (Tell me you don't desire to Instagram your next cross-country trip standing outside that thing.) Loewy was exceptional at making big, boring machines wait fast and fascinating.

In 1962, the Kennedy White House tapped Loewy to pattern the livery for Air Force One. Keep in heed that by this fourth dimension, Loewy had designed for Coca-Cola, IBM, and Boeing–a shortlist of celebrated American brands. Every bit the New York Times tells the story in a superb 2015 profile, JFK inherited a airplane from Dwight D. Eisenhower that was painted orange for visibility. Loewy spotted information technology landing one night and told his friend, who happened to be President Kennedy'southward Air Forcefulness aid, that it was "rather gaudy." At the time, a new Air Force 1 was under construction. So Loewy offered his design consultation services without charging a fee.

[Photo: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images]

Loewy showed Kennedy some ideas months subsequently at the White Firm. Kennedy liked a red and golden version of the airplane, merely asked that the ruby-red exist swapped out with blue, his favorite color. The blue was technically a mix of two blues, sky blue and ultramarine blueish, printed on the side of the airplane and the tail similar a racing stripe. Kennedy also selected the Caslon typeface for the plane, which was used to render "United States of America" on an early printed version of the Constitution. Altogether, the blueprint painted an optimistic portrait of the Us: rooted in the by, but flying inexorably into the time to come.

The design has remained unchanged since, and today it'southward an icon. Early drawings of the design accept been admitted to the Museum of Modern Fine art's permanent collection. The plane is literally printed with the words of our founding fathers.

Trump's aeroplane ignorantly does away with all of that historical and practical significance. Loewy's arching bluish lines–those clever flourishes that Loewy used to give half-a-million-pound trains a sense of speed–are gone. The replacement is some stacked, red, white and bluish design that'due south rendered like a 747 sandwich. It looks like the livery of Trump'due south personal aeroplane, flipped upside down.

How'due south that for a metaphor of America?