Driving Political Opinion

In July 23 issue of Newsweek design guru Michael Bierut, a partner at design firm Pentagram and an editor of Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, and author of Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design analyzed the bumper crop of bumper stickers of the 2008 presidential hopefuls. Bierut looked at logos, colors, fonts and layout. Some of his comments were slashing and some laudatory: 

Hillary Clinton: The deliberate branding decision here is to go by first name only to make her approachable and friendly, and to disassociate herself from the Clinton dynasty.

Barack Obama: Obama is blessed with a name that looks good in type. Obama’s font is quite elegant and almost literary.

John Edwards: Someone thought long and hard about that decision to insert that green trail off the star. It’s a kind of ham-handed gesture of symbolic environmentalism.

Rudy Giuliani: Rudy’s logo is like a brick wall. It uses an extra bold sans serif font, Ventura, and the design is squared off perfectly, nailed down from all sides like it can’t move a millimeter – telling of a former prosecutor…The tightness communicates an absolutely solid bulwark against external dangers. Rudy is clearly a product of the sophisticated new York media environment and he received very good design advice. This is the best of all of them. 

John McCain: “McCain has the worst logo. He’s using an Optima font that many designers dislike because it’s a hybrid for people who can’t decide between a serif or sans serif. It’s wishy-washy, neither contemporary nor traditional. This is the typeface used for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and with the center star straight off a military cap, it’s overtly militaristic. There’s no subtlety.

Mitt Romney: Mitt is not a first name that you want to stand alone – it’s an object. The framing boxes are careless and half-baked. This looks like the bumper sticker of someone who’s not going to win.” [Romney’s real first name is Willard.]