Matt Bonner

There’s something about US president Donald Trump that evokes massive balloons. If you wanted to mock German chancellor Angela Merkel, you’d probably draw a cartoon; with Theresa May, you might build a carnival float. But attempts at ridiculing Trump invariably lead people into inflatable land. That may be because of the man’s stodgy physique; because of his tendency to embark on hot air-filled rants; or it may be a harsh comparison between his presidency and the crashing-and-burning Hindenburg zeppelin (even if, strictly speaking, the Hindenburg was not a balloon, but a rigid airship).

Whatever the reason, almost one year after the Trump Chicken inflatable’s appearance near the White House, along comes the Trump Baby Blimp — the nappy-wearing balloon scheduled to take off from Parliament Square Garden in London on Friday, on the occasion of Donald Trump’s first presidential visit to the UK.


What had started as a joke among a bunch of anti-Trump friends ballooned into a project that has raised £29,000 and counting through crowdfunding, and attracted worldwide media attention.

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Suddenly, Matt Bonner, one of the activists behind the blimp and a graphic designer by trade, had to look at the practicalities of designing and building a derisive yet airworthy effigy of the world’s most powerful man.

“I had never, ever, designed an inflatable before, but I have designed a lot of protest art, material for campaigning organisations and for political protests,” Boner says in a north London park where the Trump Baby brigade has gathered for a test inflation. “So we worked out how to do some 3D modelling.”


Bonner took to Adobe Illustrator and started thrashing out some two-dimensional concept designs — detailing the front, the back and the sides of the balloon-to-be. Initially, the Trump Baby was supposed to be crying, but, on second thought, Bonner felt that it wasn’t right.

WIRED

“We thought that maybe the crying was too sympathetic,” he says. Bonner eventually changed the expression to Trump’s trademark pout-grimace, which runs no risk of eliciting sympathy.

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To underline Trump’s choleric disposition, Bonner also chose to colour Trump’s face in Pantone 715C, a shade of orange “slightly redder” than the Pantone 1375C used for the rest of the blimp’s body. A quick chromatic analysis of some of Donald Trump’s pictures actually pins his face colour closer to salmon-like Pantone 486C, or a blend of 486C and ham-like 163C. There are no recent pictures of Trump's unclothed body to verify the colour accuracy.


Tom Pennington/Getty Images/WIRED

Trump’s tiny right hand, clutching a smartphone from which he has arguably been tweeting some late-night broadside, was the most complicated part of the design but, Bonner says, “a detail worth adding”.

Once ready, Bonner’s designs were passed on to Imagine Inflatables, a Leicestershire-based company that specialises in manufacturing intricate inflatables for household brands and large events — the firm made five eight-metre-long inflatable clouds for the London Olympics’ opening ceremony in 2012. Imagine Inflatables declined to comment for this story.

Bonner’s blueprints and Imagine’s expertise resulted in a six-metre-tall, bean-shaped balloon of uncanny Trumpian likeness. Made of a lightweight, thin sheet of plastic, the £3,500 inflatable needs to be filled up with £700 worth of helium — that’s 36 cubic metres, according to Bonner — in order to fly.

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Matt Bonner

And fly it will. The team initially planned to sail over the Thames on boats, the blimp floating overhead, but the Port of London Authority warned that winds would be too strong. They then resolved to tether it in Parliament Square Garden, but struggled to secure the Mayor of London’s authorisation. City Hall maintained that inflatables are art, not a legitimate form of political protest. The Mayor eventually caved last week, possibly under the pressure of media coverage and an online petition. Bonner says the blimp has also obtained the permissions of the Metropolitan Police and the National Air Traffic Service — which requested that the balloon never fly over 30 metres of height.

On Friday, the balloon will rise from the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament from 09:30 until 11:30, in conjunction with several anti-Trump protests across central London. Trump himself will steer as clear as possible from the capital, and he is therefore unlikely to see his inflatable doppelganger.


Matt Bonner

Six people — including Bonner — will be manoeuvering the blimp by pulling and releasing sixteen nylon ropes; they will also use sandbags to keep it in place. “It is going to be stationary, but we will be able to lean it forward,” Bonner says.

The only thing that could jeopardise the whole blimp operation is wind: if wind speed gets over 10 to 15mph, Bonners says, the balloon will need to be pulled down, to avoid it flying off into skies above London.