Tag Archives: Election

Obama: anatomy of a logo

OK, I will admit it. The first thing (OK, the second thing; his speech at the 2004 DNC was the first) that piqued my interest in Barack Obama was the sight of his logo on a sticker, way early on in the primary campaign (like, summer of 2007 early). It was clear right away that Obama had the best design team in the history of political campaigns working for him.

Let’s take a look at what makes this logo so great. Ultimately what it boils down to is that every detail is imbued with relevant meaning, and the overall result is very aesthetically pleasing.

First, it’s an O, for Obama. No-brainer there. It incorporates the requisite colors: red, white and blue. But what it does with them, and with a few simple shapes, is brilliant. The red and white stripes of the U.S. flag are there as well, blended into an unmistakable and powerful image: the sun rising over a rural American hillside (a cornfield, no less) into a perfect, clear blue sky. Now that’s “morning in America.”

On a related note, I’ll leave it to you to interpret the meaning of the logo’s appearance in a John McCain commercial.

On another related note, this.

I will miss one thing about Sarah Palin…

…when she retreats back into the relative obscurity of the governor’s mansion in Juneau. And that’s Tina Fey’s impersonations on Saturday Night Live. Even the governor herself enjoys them… at least with the sound turned down.

As I was watching the vice presidential debate last week I was already thinking ahead to the skit that would inevitably be on SNL in two days. I didn’t get to watch it live but I just watched it online and it’s probably the most I’ve laughed out loud at anything on the show since “Dick in a Box.” Let’s give some credit to Jason Sudeikis; his McCain-loving, Scranton-detesting Joe Biden was on par with Tina Fey for laughs. I’m just glad I wasn’t the only one who had contemplated a “maverick” drinking game.

(I had to strip out NBC’s Internet Explorer conditional comments to get the video to show up in Safari. I could probably have taken the time to fix their code properly so it will work in all 3 major browsers but, well, I don’t really care about IE. But if you’re stuck with it, here’s a link to the video on NBC’s site.)

Better late than never

This is the kind of stuff I have been hoping for from the media for the past 8 years. Better late than never, I guess. Then again, imagine what sorts of disasters might have been avoided if more people with the ears of the nation would actually call out the incompetence of our leadership.

Of course, we also have Wolf Blitzer’s wishy-washy response here. But I was heartened by a comment he made last night after interviewing Joe Biden post-debate. He said (and I’m paraphrasing a bit here) “It would be nice if we could also get Sarah Palin but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”