CBS News apparently hoped to draw in the youngs with the design of the debate stage, but it is cruel to the eyes. Behind each candidate is a screen that, when cropped by the TV screen, is a big ugly square, as if it was designed for an Instagram crop.
The screen is busy, with three layers, and too many words, and a disorienting diagonal. It’s even worse on the livestream, in which it’s surrounded by tweets and a graphic about “most tweeted issues” or “most tweeted per minute.” That created an absurd moment, just before commercial break, in which a Hillary Clinton tweet in Spanish appeared on screen next to Clinton, as if she were live-tweeting her own performance.