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2020 Election Logos/Branding Thread


Dexter Morgan

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On 1/28/2019 at 7:33 PM, the admiral said:

 

Whose stuff looks good to you so far? Like I said, I dig the understated New Deal-era aesthetics of Warren's logo. I feel like she's ready to welcome some hatred.

Well, there's a central question that I can't answer... If you stick to RWB, are you being more presidential, or are you just blending in with the crowd? If you try something else, is it good to stand out, or are you too far afield? Or is the design often irrelevant, and we're nerds thinking about this too much?

 

So setting that aside, I do actually like Kamala Harris's logo. I think it has energy and warmth. It's very different from what you're used to seeing, so maybe that's good. Or bad. Or I don't know.

 

Warren's is also pretty solid. The mint (money?) green feels like an interesting end-around into a 'Murican color scheme without going straight RWB. It reminds me of how the 90s Capitals with the bronze and bronze/copper patina colors still felt appropriate for DC while eschewing RWB. I don't go for color horoscopes like purple representing wisdom, but I think the mint is cool, calming, and stable.

 

Most of the others are IMO are just in that unremarkable category; not sure if I've seen any truly bad ones this year. Julián and Pete are obviously avoiding their last names. Delaney has the beginning of a good logo, but I don't think there's much there as is.

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12 minutes ago, Cosmic said:

Well, there's a central question that I can't answer... If you stick to RWB, are you being more presidential, or are you just blending in with the crowd? If you try something else, is it good to stand out, or are you too far afield? Or is the design often irrelevant, and we're nerds thinking about this too much?

 

All of us here are always nerds thinking about everything too much.

 

But I think political design has become very relevant since Obama. Even 10+ years ago I remember people cooing over the genius of Obama's logo while jeering at Hillary's 1992 holdover of a serif typeface, tired colors, and vague flaglike imagery. So much of that Obama campaign really (uuuuuugggggh) changed the game, and now design matters. Now I'm not sure the masses will necessarily see what I see and say "oh, Elizabeth Warren's stuff looks kind of WPA-ish, maybe that's supposed to mean she's one of those old-fashioned fight-the-rich Democrats for once," but I know Times New Roman and a toothpaste flag would never draw that connection, and maybe any gains through good design are electoral found money.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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37 minutes ago, the admiral said:

maybe any gains through good design are electoral found money

You're right there. Even if it's not strictly the logo, good design in the campaign can help instill confidence.

 

I'm not sure, though... did Obama really change the game, or did he just have a really effing good logo? Gretzky is probably the greatest ever, but I don't think he changed the way the game is played. I think design is simply a bigger part of life nowadays. Computer talk used to be much more about the nuts and bolts, whereas now it's much more about how slick the box it comes in is.

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I'd say he changed it. The proof is that even Republicans stepped up their game -- albeit as best they could, considering the creative class leans left and generally isn't lining up to do work for ghouls. Romney's 2012 logo got mocked for resembling toothpaste, sure, but it was an obvious evolution from his desultory 2008 stuff that could have been any candidate for anything. An R formed by people's silhouettes, presumably those of people standing behind their candidate, or lining up to vote for him, is actually pretty abstract and conceptual, especially for a blood-and-soil party. By 2016, even dull-eyed troglodytes like Scott Walker and Rick Perry, who, were it entirely up to them, wouldn't even have art taught in their states' schools, were shelling out for more thoughtful design than Times New Roman on deep blue and some swooshes that suggest a flag or an eagle (a fleagle?).

 

But of course, you-know-who zigged where everyone zagged with that hat and thrived on what can only be called anti-design. Maybe we'll have to say the same for This American Cop. The game's always changing. 

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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On 1/30/2019 at 12:00 AM, Cosmic said:

Well, there's a central question that I can't answer... If you stick to RWB, are you being more presidential, or are you just blending in with the crowd? If you try something else, is it good to stand out, or are you too far afield? 

 

i think all of this is true. the key is to determine which route is appropriate for the given candidate. Conservatives will do better with the familiar and patriotic, while Liberals better with breaking from the crowd and doing something new. 

 

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I think part of that is just illustrating a political ideology in their logoset. If you're more liberal, like farther left than average, you're gonna want to illustrate something new and unique, mainly something that goes against the standard red-white-blue identity. That's what's happening with these women and the Democrats so far. They want to be new and unique, feeding off the energy Bernie created in 2016, and part of that is creating a logo with bold and unique text, along with colors that aren't just red-white-blue.

 

I don't think there have been any bad identities thus far. Everything is unique and bold, yet remaining somewhat tied down to the status-quo. Elizabeth Warren has the most presidential look identity wise, but I like Tulsi's the best overall. She's a new player to the presidential scene, and her identity shows that with a youthful and unique font. Her home state of Hawaii is represented in the sunrise, as well as a "new, bright future" for America. Thus far, she has the most coherent and consistent identity.

 

Kamala's is the worst so far, if you ask me. It's bold and unique, which is good, but it's only text. And when you try to shrink that down, say for a polo-shirt or a watermark on an Instagram post, it's gonna become mostly unreadable. Plus, the "FOR THE PEOPLE" is so bland and generic, it doesn't relate specifically to her or to her visual identity. It's founded in pretty good ideas, but it doesn't execute it right.

 

It's gonna be a good election cycle for the Democrats, both in branding and otherwise.

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4 hours ago, Zeus89725 said:

 Kamala's is the worst so far, if you ask me. It's bold and unique, which is good, but it's only text. And when you try to shrink that down, say for a polo-shirt or a watermark on an Instagram post, it's gonna become mostly unreadable. Plus, the "FOR THE PEOPLE" is so bland and generic, it doesn't relate specifically to her or to her visual identity. It's founded in pretty good ideas, but it doesn't execute it right.

Apparently “Kamala Harris for the people” is the way she opened her arguments as a prosecuting attorney. I initially took it as a rather bland reference to the Gettysburg address, but it’s got some esoteric meaning for her. I don’t know that anyone would ever pick up on it, and you’d think her campaign wouldn’t want to draw much attention to her actual career. 

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1 hour ago, zigbazah said:

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Am I the only one who loathes the abuse of the word "Rise" in branding these days?   It feels remarkably pretentious. 

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I find this criticism trite and overused, but that truly looks like it was made in a word processor. Booker always struck me as a "tries too hard" kind of guy, so this is a surprise from him. The first name thing only works if that's actually how people refer to a person. Of whom is that true in politics? Just Hillary and Bernie (and Oprah 😉)?

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Reminds me of "Do You Know What I'm Going To Do Next Saturday?"

 

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