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By Zach Arnold | January 3, 2011

Last week, Jonathan Snowden wrote this article about Silver Star, Clay Guida, and a Nazi image on a recent shirt that Clay wore during a video interview with Fight! Magazine. Suffice to say, the article drew a very strong reaction. If you haven’t read the article already, I would recommend that you do so and then I would also recommend reading this: Clothing companies are responsible for their products.

I wanted to get reaction from someone inside the MMA art/fashion industry on this story, so I contacted Jeff Finley (web | Twitter) of Go Media Inc. Jeff’s company does custom art work and also has a stock art boutique Arsenal (MMA-inspired set 19). He’s also produced an e-book called The Designer’s Guide to the Apparel Industry that covers a lot of the topics discussed in the previous articles linked in this post. Here is Jeff’s response to the points brought up in the articles talking about MMA clothing lines and Nazi imagery being used:

I’m a designer who does a lot of apparel industry work. In my objective opinion, I would assume that Silver Star had no clue the resemblance to Nazi imagery. I’m sure they’re not trying to subtly convey any white supremacist or Nazi beliefs and it’s pure coincidence that that skull ended up on their shirt. I’ve seen this kind of stuff before. They’re right, it’s a very clip-art driven industry. Skulls have seen a huge resurgence in mainstream culture and are used on everything from death metal records to teenie-bopper pajamas you find at Target. The same could be said for heraldry, wings, shields, etc. These are popular design elements that have been reappropriated to ride the trends and appeal to the youth market. I know because I’ve been creating these kinds of graphics for apparel companies since 2005. I’ve been asked to Make it Look like Affliction hundreds of times.

The simple fact is the imagery “looks cool” and “looks bad-ass” which I’m sure is all the company is trying to convey here. That’s what clients say to me when they hire me to do designs. So it’s not surprising that they ended up using a skull that resembled an old Nazi icon. Designers often use Google Images to hunt for reference when creating graphics and this is one of the pitfalls of doing so. If the designer illustrates a skull based off an image they found on Google Images, they need to be careful not to copy it too closely. They need to be original and create something new with it so they’re not called out like this. It’s doubtful the designer of this graphic purposely integrated a Nazi symbol into the design. Obviously, nobody caught it until it was publicly identified.

Designers need to take responsibility for this. And brands need to be more involved and research the imagery associated with their brands. And fans need to understand these things happen often in this industry and it’s not necessarily the brand’s message or motive. I think there needs to be more evidence than just t-shirt graphics to blame Silver Star for promoting a Nazi message though. I think they did a good job of responding to the criticisms and pulling the offensive designs. That’s about as good as they can do. If they were truly trying to push a racist or Nazi agenda, I don’t think they would react this way.