Designing Barack Obama

Newsweek's Andrew Romano inteviews graphic design guru Michael Bierut to learn the typographical secrets to Obama's success. If that leaves you hungry for more, don't miss this (non-political) web video featuring Bierut that The Atlantic did back in January:

And here's Virginia Postrel's great article on fonts.

Comments

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!!! FOR HILLARY!!

Posted by idiotic | February 28, 2008 12:23 PM

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what is so hard about having a single source -- let's say, a print house in Colorado -- from which all printed material is procured? Is it really that difficult to keep signs and banners consistent this way?

That said, I agree the campaign's branding efforts are high-quality, Apple/Target/GQ corporate-level. Like everything else in his campaign, it's well thought-out and flawlessly executed.

Posted by evie | February 28, 2008 12:27 PM

When I was in NY in December, MoMA had a good, if small, exhibition on Helvetica. Great stuff if you're into typefaces.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | February 28, 2008 12:36 PM

evie: if you underestimate your logistical needs or fail to engage with supporters directly, then they start rolling their own. This is an example of how Obama has not only built a legion of supporters but carefully channeled their efforts.

Posted by phil | February 28, 2008 1:00 PM

He's not kidding about HRC morphing her website. It's all in Gotham now, too.

What serif font is BHO for his name in those signs?

"Let's do a batch in Arial." Heh. Can't go wrong with MS default settings!

Posted by Matt B | February 28, 2008 1:49 PM

what is so hard about having a single source -- let's say, a print house in Colorado -- from which all printed material is procured? Is it really that difficult to keep signs and banners consistent this way?

Organising a campaign -- especially on the Dem side -- can feel like cat herding, when you've got state, local and national organisers. For instance, you might be under pressure to use local, union print shops for a state primary, with the all-important tiny badge.

The morphing of the Hillary site is amusing, but Obama's design team -- Chicago-based, natch -- is really damn good. H&FJ deserve their props, too: as they say, Gotham is just good at being Gotham.

Though Postrel usually annoys me, that's a good little piece on the dynamics of modern American typography. There are wider points to be made: the old dynamo for type innovation -- corporate giants -- has given way to diverse, niche uses. And she might have added a graf about the people who fontify your own handwriting, and what that says about personalisation in digital years.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | February 28, 2008 2:06 PM

It's interesting that Bieruit mentions the analogy of Obama's logo to a Nike swoosh, but he doesn't mention the most obvious previous candidate to try a similar logo -- Al Gore in 2000 (who is said to have personally designed his logo, for better or for worse), whose logo looks like it was literally inspired by the Nike swoosh.

Posted by Julian Elson | February 28, 2008 2:24 PM

Fonts and typography are a time-honored art. When looking at a font, it's like one is looking at history, from early manuscripts to the highspeed dot matrix printers of today.

Of course, there's also the issue that we're trying to decide the next leader of the free world, and none of the top three contenders are really qualified for the job.

But, next to fonts that's just a minor concern.

Posted by TLB | February 28, 2008 2:44 PM

Wow. That's a mighty big change in HRC's website, there. Only two weeks ago, I complained to someone that it was hard to know which way to go on her page -- whether to make phone calls, donate, or get the latest news.

But I guess if you support her you'll see this kind of analysis as another sign that he/his campaign/his supporters care more about style than issues.

Posted by Paula | February 28, 2008 2:59 PM

Note: looking over these things on 4president.us, I think that Al Gore actually had the best logo of any candidate until Obama. It had both more dynamism and more elegance than the Bush/Cheney logo, or, later, the Kerry/Edwards logo, or any other campaign logos I've seen -- until Obama, that is. Criticize Al Gore's 2000 campaign all you want, but I think his logo design was ahead of the rest of the field. Its font was more readable and less heavy-handed than the thick, bold sans-serif fonts that seemed to be favored by so many others.

Posted by Julian Elson | February 28, 2008 5:22 PM

How could that Newsweek comment say so little about the logo? It's the first thing I noticed when I first visited Obama's website about a year ago, and the first thing that impressed me, after his announcement speech, about him and his campaign. It's brilliant and a model of simplicity and elegance and evocativeness or something--it's simply the best I've ever seen. Yes, as the article says, it does call to mind a rising sun. But it also evokes the flag and the romance of the open road--and hence patriotism, freedom, progress, MOVING ON. And it works with his name in so many contexts. How could any little symbol do more? Who did it?

Posted by skeptica | February 28, 2008 6:10 PM