Design does not exist in a vaccum, colors, patterns and palettego beyond what you see to craft a careful vision of a candidate. ,They are also supposed to be carefully done. Obama’s ever present O logo is fantastic design, so much so that both pro and anti support groups use it as part of the iconography associted with him. Want to slam the man? Replace the O in a nasty or derisive term with his logo… BOOM instant association without any effort on your part. Same goes for the pro support groups. Beyond politics this logo is great.
Enter Mitt Romney, since his last campaign failed, and he wasn’t selected to represent his part he rebranded, which is a good idea. You wouldn’t want someone associating a failed campaign with your new effort, your color Palette is already set so you probably want to go with that. His people decided to follow the Obama lead and replace a letter with a stylized typographic element. The R in Romney was the victim.
This is what they went with. Which has a couple of problems, First off the graphic designers involved blocked out the whole silloette of the letter R instead of leaving the space in between the leg and the diagonal line. It has flow, it has a great little embossed edge to it to give it a bit of color depth, a trick Obama also uses on the O to create visual movement. The R is also angeled slightly for even more effect. But the changes to the normal appearance of what an R is supposed to look like visually separate the R from the rest of the word so much that it looks like Omney is the candidate’s name
And then there is association. This logo looks familiar… so much so that i couldn’t place it until I was brushing my teethe in the morning. By now you have already seen the logo to the right. Well Mitt Does have a nice smile, perfect pearly whites too. Secret consipicy or design gone wrong.
If you want an example of excellent design of a personal brand for a candidate I loved McCain’s logo from the last campaign, it pulled together a strong font, a simple Palette, which actually deviated from Red, White and Blue, by just a little. And pulled the star as an obvious reference to his military experience. Good Strong logo. I wonder what other interesting logos we will see this election season.
Leaving politics aside what do you think of the logo and branding concepts?
