Obama logo ideas that weren’t chosen | Hacker News Reader

Obama logo ideas that weren’t chosen

logodesignlove.com

76 pointsdilanj27 comments

The Obama campaign did such an amazing job marketing itself and it really shows that the power of a logo is its simplicity. The others were all more relevant - most of them were more topical with the "'08" or "change" in them, but the final logo just works so well.

Obama's logo reminds me a little of Bank of America's. They both evoke an image of the American flag as well as farming/middle America (BofA's logo looks like farm plots to me and the red/white stripes of Obama's logo make me think the same). The blue semi-circle looks somewhat like the arc of a rainbow over the horizon evoking (for me) a hopefulness that something is better over the horizon and an idea of inclusiveness.

It's one of the best logos I've seen. I'm guessing he'll use it again in 2012 as it's an instantly recognizable symbol.

The ones with the O masking the photo looked like they were using the Bliss wallpaper from XP.

I immediately thought the same thing.

It's nice to see that they developed so many different styles, you really can't have to many rough drafts.

They ultimately settled on the best one.

The unusual thing was that he had a logo at all. That was a clever move. I have to say, though, that the precedents of political organizations having logos are not that great.

There are some other unusual aspects of the Obama logo not mentioned.

- They used a much brighter and more intense blue, almost cyan. Even though blue is the Democratic color, they tend to fall back on very conservative navy blues. Obama's blue isn't afraid to be a liberal, and it doesn't think it has to crush your hand in a handshake.

- This logo is about equally targeted to online and offline campaigns and takes advantage of ubiquitous digital printing. It breaks with 70s-style solid colors and offset printing, and embraces subtle gradations (although it can still be rendered in solid colors for media like baseball caps).

- It is assumed that the logo will be modified for special interests by amateurs, especially for online campaigns. This is anathema to most designers, by the way. The typical logo comes with a little rulebook telling you how can and can't use it. Mostly can't. I think the first instance of this kind of logo was Tux the Penguin.

These logos were seemingly scraped from this video with the designer describing the creation process:

http://www.vsapartners.com/news.asp?article=70

My co-worker wrote about the genius of the Obama campaign logo earlier this year:

http://www.herecomesthescience.com/2008/02/06/the-genius-of-...

He shows the other campaign logos for comparison and it's pretty amazing how similar the other logos look to each other.

I'm trying to think of another logo that is so simple yet is so relevant and communicates so much, but I can't seem to. Any other examples?

Uhh, the Nike swoosh? The Adidas three-stripes? McDonalds arches?

Obama's logo is good, but if you're talking about simplicity and communication, it barely compares to the culturally-transcendent nature of those corporate logos. Those logos don't identify with a language or anything, they simply carry meaning.

But did those logos carry meaning right from the start or was that brand recognition built over time? What's interesting about the Obama logo is that it's instantly evocative of a message without needing years of branding, yet it still manages to be super simple.

without needing years of branding

Both parties stuffed "years" of branding effort into less time through an incessant and overwhelming campaign effort.

From the Obama camp, the "O" logo was literally unavoidable... TV ads, magnets of all types, shirts, pins, flags, posters, lawn-spam, the list goes on. If any company had that amount of time, money, and insane level of word of mouth, they'd be just as well branded.

Oh for sure -- I'm not saying there wasn't tons of branding on the part of the Obama campaign. But this logo was launched at the very beginning, with the speech in Springfield in early '07, before he raised a billion dollars, and even then it communicated a clear message. I'm not sure the same was true of the corporate logos you mention.

I’m talking about how much the logo alone by itself communicates. Lets see,

1.The ‘O’ symbolizing Obama. 2.The colors of the flag. 3.The unification of red and blue, indicating cross-party unity. 4.The sunrise image aligning with the ‘hope’ and ‘new start’ campaign themes. 5.The horizon, indicating the future.

Just a few that came to mind. Does the Nike swoosh, the Adidas three stripes or the McDonalds arches symbolically convey nearly as much?

I guess what you're saying is how much communication was intended for the logo when it was designed, correct?

A logo doesn't communicate anything "by itself" but its empirical nature (text, colors, shape etc.) without branding.

You wouldn't intrinsically know those 5 things having never seen the Obama logo, in the same way you'd simply see the McDonalds arches as a yellow "M".

The unification of red and blue, indicating cross-party unity

This is going to be pretty confusing when we go back to thinking that red symbolizes commies.

The swoosh communicates more densely, I think: it's a single, monochrome visual element, while the Obama logo is busy being a shape and a letter and a picture and a flag. The Nike logo says a lot, laconically; the Obama logo says a lot by being visually chatty.

Seems like we'll continue with the red=Republican thing for the forseeable future.

There isn't anything intrinsic about communism that says "red, that's the color!". It was just a useful convention.

I don't know how much the Nike swoosh can say, perhaps movement/agility?. It's always been fairly meaningless to me, aside from the whole being the Nike logo thing.

Seems like we'll continue with the red=Republican thing for the forseeable future.

"We" are a very small minority. Everyone -- the US included -- knows who Reds are. Only Americans, and folks who follow American news fairly closely, know what "red states" are.

Ultimately, thats who the Obama campaign was aiming at this semester: Americans. The people who can vote for him.

Yes, but we're talking about the long term. Americans interacting with Europeans are going to wonder why everyone scoffs about associating 'red' with militarism and low taxes. It's not sustainable.

I imagine when interacting with foreign committees and governments, Obama would use a symbol of the United States such as the flag, rather then his own personal logo.

actually there is...just look at the flags

China flag: http://www.worldclassflags.com/productimages/cf_china_rep.gi...

USSR flag: http://www.worldclassflags.com/productimages/cf_ussr.gif

Vietnam flag: http://www.worldclassflags.com/productimages/cf_vietnam.gif

I think the University of Johannesburg's logo falls into this category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UJ_logo.png

(Excuse the quality of the image).

Here's some information behind the logo:

http://www.uj.ac.za/Informationabout/OurBrand/tabid/8287/Def...

I liked these ones recently: http://abduzeedo.com/clever-logos

In particular; lochness, food writers guild and gotham books. Fedex gets undue praise everywhere and I think it is a lazy design. the F,e and d don't sit sharply anyway.

I liked the post-election New Yorker cover:

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341cc90353ef010535f...

I liked the pre-election New Yorker cover:

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/1/C/2/new-yorker-oba...

Really interesting look at the evolution of his logo.

"The strongest logos tell simple stories"

08ama. L33t!

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