Campaign Desk
But For the Zapf Dingbats
Fred Thompson’s campaign might have really caught on
By Liz Cox Barrett Mon 28 Jan 2008 12:21 PMTalk about typecast! Turns out even Mitt Romney’s logo is “inconsistent.” This, according to graphic designers Sam Berlow and Cyrus Highsmith who analyzed the candidates’ signage for an ideas piece in yesterday’s Boston Globe.
“Typography can subtly or boldly define a company, product, or person…The logos of the presidential candidates are no exception,” wrote Berlow and Highsmith.
So. To Berlow and Highsmith’s expert eyes, a Hillary Clinton sign “projects recycled establishment,” with “type [that] has a tired feeling, as if the ink has been soaking into the page too long; ” Edwards’ type “is very Wal-Mart, tabloid, middle class;” “[Obama’s] sans serifs conjure up the clean look of Nike or Sony. This typography is young and cool. Clearly not the old standards of years past;” the uppercase M-I-T-T on a Romney sign result in “an irregular rhythm and feeling of inconsistency;” and “everything about [McCain’s] logo says you can buy a car from this man.” (Amazing, isn’t it, how logos and signs likely designed months ago project almost exactly today’s conventional wisdom?)
Get these guys on cable! Not only are they funny — “The tall lower-case [on Clinton’s sign] reminds me of someone with their pants pulled up too high” — but theirs is one sort of sign-reading I have, amazingly, yet to see from The Best Political Team On Television or The Place for Politics.
Better still, for cable purposes, they’re not afraid to tell us which way the signs point for November.
“If we were to predict the results based on typography and design,” they wrote, “we would pick McCain and Obama.”
CJR
