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Stop with the Logos!
A company needs a good logo. A politician needs a good name. But since the turn of the century (this one!) presidential candidates, or their handlers, have decided that they need to be graphically branded like Coca-Cola.
The Obama camp took it to a whole new, creepy level. And now I’m sure all the campaigns are focus grouping the bejeebers out of font styles and graphic elements. That the Clinton folks came up with something that resembles a hospital sign only says that they have the same level of taste in design that they do in candidates.
Three years ago Mitt Romney went to war with a squiggled red, white and blue “R” that said, “Please remember to brush after every meal and see your dentist twice a year!”
Let’s take a look at how the Republican entries are doing this go-around:
As we can see, Senators Paul and Cruz are on fire, supposedly with the Torch of Liberty but it could just be an angry mob. Paul’s is more esthetically pleasing but I dislike the use of just the first name. Just Elvis. Just Cher. Now, just “Rand.” And someone needs to tell Cruz’s people that in any American flag theme the stars always lead.
As for marcorubio – yeah, the man with evidently no shift key or space bar – all I have to say is, if you’re going to ripoff a look, you can do better than this:
Uh…
Here’s the one I want to see.
How’s about
What I don’t like is that they’re all decorated names.What Obama did, and I think Hillary is trying to emulate, was incorporate his initial into a picture. That implied that the candidate was more the idea of Obama than the flawed man himself, and may have helped encourage the moderates and ignorami to impute their ideas to him. Being a tabula rasa was a big reason that he won.
It’s the opposite of the Alinsky rule, perhaps: Choose your candidate, and depersonalize him.
Here is a suggested Hilary logo redesign:
Logos are pictures, even though there are letters in them. You would know Obama’s logo if it said “Orange” and not “Obama.”
Need for logos in first place is disturbing. Use of pictures to communicate is very old practice, but it should stay old practice and not be modern one. In old times people needed pictures because no one could read.
Mysterious things in sky in Renaissance paintings, Masonic symbols. Dan Brown is fool because he does not know these things were picture symbols back from time of illiteracy.
Symbols had same meaning to people in all western countries. Tarot deck is collection of them. Tarot was card game once for people who could not read or count.
The pictures were logos, used like American politicians use them now. To get people to pay attention and remember. “Picture words.” Logos means “word” in Greek.
Here is worry: In schools in all countries in West, reading grades fall every year. If not for practice by texting on phone, I think many young people would be illiterate already.
So I think this is big reason politicians need logos now. Regular words fly past heads of people because they can barely read and don’t understand or remember. So we go back to pictures again.
In thousand years, after people learn to read again, will new Dan Browns write books about ancient Obama logo and how Obama symbol proves aliens built Empire State Building?
How do you do that effectively with any letter other than O?
I’m not a graphic designer — my talent and imagination are decidedly limited — but I just don’t see how you manage the same kind of imagery with an H. (Or a J or B or W.)
You have to understand the way the human mind sees things though. Reading is work, it is processed differently than graphics. You see and process a word and a graphic differently, and this is why graphics and logos are effective. They are more than mere shorthand, they also allow you to quickly recognize and sort concepts.
I’ll give examples:
Every week I get a sizable stack of mail. If I had to read the return addresses on every envelope then it would take me far longer to sort that stack. But with logos I can tell at a glance, without reading a thing, the priorities of the different items. The process is far quicker and doesn’t require me to unjumble words and numbers.
Or take grocery purchasing – if I want to buy a particular soda I do not need to actually read every bottle, I can quickly (and at some distance) scan the shelf for the graphical pattern and spot it far more quickly.
This is why Obama’s logo actually worked, while the ones above simply do not. They are not instantly processed the way other graphics would be, so their recognition level is compromised – you have to think and read to actually spot and recognize them, as opposed to just scanning and spotting them right away. Hilary’s logo is also atrocious in that it’s bland and unlikely to actually stand out (and is also easily confused with Hospital signs).