Thoughts from the Dirty City

Everywhere you turn right now you find something about the presidential primaries. It is on the news, on the talk shows and in advertising. There doesn’t seem to be a corner left that doesn’t have at least one hopefuls face tacked up. I figured I had better hurry up and add my two cents to prevent The Dirty City from being left out in the cold.

Most people that know me know I have some pretty strong political views, but my views about design are stronger still. While I would love to say that what the candidates logo/advertising looks like doesn’t matter, actually no, I don’t want to say that at all. Fact is, it does matter. It matters because how someone presents themselves says a lot about who they are.

As a student learning about typography, one of the first things I learned was that type is language made visible. So I figured a good place to start would be to look at each candidates campaigns and see what typefaces they are utilizing, and what that says about them.

John McCain

The type face being utilized is Optima, Bold. This really struck me as an odd choice for McCain, or any presidential candidate to be honest. Optima is such a standard font that you can pretty much associate it with anything you like. On its own, as it stands, I don’t think Optima really “says” anything.

Technically speaking this is a sans serif typeface, but it doesn’t read like one. The letters are a bit splayed, with variations of thickness throughout. This variation is usually a characteristic of serif typefaces.

Optima, especially in regular or medium, is often used to portray elegance and refinement. In this instance I am not really getting that. The use of bold detracts from that in my mind. Generally speaking, people lean towards bold typefaces to portray strength, or to show importance. Perhaps McCain is attempting to portray both strength and elegance. If so, I think the designers missed the mark. Perhaps the use of bold in combination with the use of all capital letters is just overkill.

Based on the choice of Optima, I would say that the McCain campaign is trying to say as little as possible, but in a very strong way. Perhaps the saying “what you see is what you get” would be a fitting description of this candidate.

Barack Obama

Obama’s campaign is centered around two typefaces. For right now I am going to focus on the type used on the “Change We Can Believe In” posters. Not that the typeface used in the Obama ‘08 logo isn’t worth discussing, I just don’t think it has really been as much of a focus for this campaign.

The typeface used is Gotham. It isn’t exactly a new face, but it isn’t a standard or “old” face either. What makes this such an exciting choice in my mind is that it is based on geometric relationships rather than calligraphy. On the flip side, type that doesn’t lean at all on a handwritten mark such as this can tend to look cold and mechanical.

This logo avoids that (but only marginally) by use of very open kerning (space between the letters) also known as force justification (quite interesting) I would comment more on the irony of that except…it is this space around the letters that keeps the type treatment from looking to mechanical. It also gives the word some power, forcing it to take space on the page without falling to the standard of making it bold/black.

The force justification of the word “change” almost demands that word be in all capital letters. The words “we can believe in” directly under it don’t have the same demands. In fact, using a heavier version in all lower case may have given some might to the words that they don’t have right now, without taking away from the importance of the word “change.” To me, the only thing coming across is change.

Overall, I love that this isn’t just another rehashed, run of the mill standard political type treatment. It is clean and modern, and certainly a shift from what we dare accustomed to seeing from Washington.

Hillary Clinton

The font being used is New Baskerville. This is a font used mainly in text books and legal documents. Originally designed in the 1700s as an alternative to the Caslon family of typefaces. I have to say I really like the idea of a serif font for this campaign. I’m just not sure I would have gone for something this standard.

It is a great font for large amounts of copy. New Baskerville is clean, and easy to read. The little serifs have some flair without detracting from the function or legibility. However, when choosing a font to define your message to the world why would you choose one that is just so standard?

The use of New Baskerville here isn’t quite as standard and out of the box. It doesn’t use all caps, but it looks like they wanted to, but didn’t. The x-height of the lowercase letters is strangely too tall. Instead of bringing power to her name, the “H” just seem belittled. The proportions are just off, it looks uncomfortable instead of powerful. Maybe, like McCain, Hillary is looking to play both sides with this and winding up with neither.

Historically, the graphics of presidential campaigns have often been poorly designed, stale and uninteresting. Nothing could be more true of this logo in my opinion. Is this her way of saying “more of the same”?

I am just going to point out one other thing, her campaign identity is focused entirely around her first name. Perhaps she is trying to make a connection to voters on a personal level. Perhaps she is trying to avoid too much of a connection to her husbands presidency.

I have tried to stick to nothing but my opinion on typographic uses here, and that is just one small part of a logo. I could also mention the very military looking and perfectly centered star in McCain’s logo. Or the rising sun of Obama’s campaign. And what is the significance of the three stars and three stripes of Hillary’s logo. I could mention these things, but I will save that for another post.

No comments