Manchester<\/a> Metropolitan before moving to Swindon. At 21, he returned to Manchester, working in his parent\u2019s chip shop while trying to get work. \u201cI don\u2019t want to blow smoke up my own ass but I\u2019ve always been good, I always knew I would be an artist one way or another,\u201d he says. His illustrations have since appeared in the New Yorker and Time magazine, and he is currently working on an exhibition for Manchester\u2019s Arndale shopping centre.<\/p>\nBurnham initially used the image for his Twitter handle, but it has since appeared on billboards, beer mats, mugs, aprons and record inlays, becoming a visual proxy for both his mayoral campaigns and more recent campaigning in Makerfield. With his spot-on light scowl and navy\/black attire, the image has become shorthand for Burnham\u2019s anti-establishment sentiment. \u201cThere is no tie, no,\u201d says Chow. After its initial use, Burnham said he was \u201cgrateful to Stan for making me look cooler than I am\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s rare for an election these days not to feature some sort of visual merchandising, but making it land is not always a sure thing. \u201cI don\u2019t know why it works but he\u2019s quite a modern guy, and my style is quite similar, so maybe it helps to humanise him?\u201d Chow\u2019s images are modern but playful, he says. \u201cHe wants to be seen as a man of the people and maybe the design delivers that?\u201d He\u2019s tweaked it a bit since the initial version, he says.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t just Burnham who copied it from Twitter. Within a few hours of him posting the image, \u201cit had been reused [and memed] to fuck\u201d, most notably by senior Reform UK figures including Nigel Farage and the Makerfield byelection candidate, Robert Kenyon, who recently posted the image on social media, doctored with imagery and words to advance an anti-immigration sentiment.<\/p>\n
Chow was neither consulted by, nor gave permission to Reform UK for the image\u2019s usage. \u201cMemes are one thing, but something [nefarious] like that? That\u2019s something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took legal action and they have since removed the images. \u201cIt\u2019s all fair in love and war [on social media] as far as I\u2019m concerned but when it comes to something like Reform, you have to draw a line,\u201d he says. As for Burnham nicking the imagery, \u201cat the time, I didn\u2019t charge him\u201d, says Chow. \u201cI think initially him using it felt like recognition enough for me. But yeah, don\u2019t worry, [Burnham\u2019s team] have licensed the image off me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Andy Burnham after his victory in the Makerfield byelection. Photograph: Mark Waugh\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
What happens now that Burnham is heading beyond Makerfield? \u201cI\u2019m not sure I want the attention \u2013 I mean in some ways this has been my journey too,\u201d he says. \u201cBut yes, I\u2019d probably still send him a message.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was shortly after Andy Burnham\u2019s famously rousing speech outside the Manchester Central Library in October 2020 that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-648535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}