Heraldry in the News!

So there I was, minding my own business, looking at some of the recent stories on-line, when I was caught by a headline:

"The Logo for Donald Trump International Airport Appears to Be AI Slop"

It turns out that recently, the Palm Beach International Airport in South Florida was renamed the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. And along with the new name, it's been given a new logo.

The story about this new name and logo was written by Frank Landymore, and posted on Fri, July 10, 2026 at 9:13 AM CDT. It can be found at hcttps://currently.att.yahoo.com/tech/ai/articles/logo-donald-trump-international-airport-141311663.html

Here's a close-up, pointing out the issues the Mr. Landymore discusses below:

"You'll notice some things that're a little off in the finer details. The talons are horribly deformed and shaped differently from each other. The entire legs are uneven, too, and the base of them are represented as a strange conglomeration of blobs, which are also inconsistent. In fact, the whole thing is slightly asymmetrical. The wings have an uneven number of feathers. The two olive branches — another error in itself, because the eagle is supposed to be clutching a bundle of arrows in its right-side talon — have differing numbers of leaves. And the shield only has eleven stripes, as opposed to the thirteen that the actual Great Seal is supposed to feature."

To all of which I would add another: there are no stars on the chief! The arms of the United States of America, the shield on the breast of the eagle, is blazoned Paly of thirteen argent and gules a chief azure. No stars anywhere.

Landymore goes on to ask if this is AI slop? "Eagle-eyed and outraged netizens didn't hesitate to make this diagnosis, with one Reddit thread calling out the Trump logo's incongruities going viral."

"'All the resources in the world and the logo for Trump Airport is AI generated,' the title lamented."

He goes on to say that, "maybe his new airport logo is kind of a perfect use case for AI. The displaying of the US Great Seal is highly restricted, so it's unlikely that an airport in Florida would be authorized to flaunt it as a logo, even if Trump himself wanted it to. But with AI, you can quickly spit out a cheap bastardization, uncanny in its likeness, but also not quite right."

Included below for comparison with the above is the Seal of the President of the United States, on a baseball-style cap that I purchased a the gift shop at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when I was there a few years ago. It is pretty easy to spot the differences between a good embroidered reproduction of the seal and the "AI slop" on the signs for the new President Donald J. Trump International Airport.

As an aside, I have to admit I think my favorite part of this cap is the embroidered/embossed black-on-black eagle and shield on the brim.

Anyway, here's a full-color drawing of the full achievement of arms of the U.S. with even more detail that you can use to compare:

As someone said just a very few years ago, "I don't want artificial intelligence to write books and make art; I want artificial intelligence to do the dishes and and the laundry so I can write books and make art."

And the art on that airport sign is only one reason for wishing that.