by Armin Vit

Late last year, a slide show in The New York Times, "Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos" took to the blogwaves like wildfire. In it, illustrator Ward Sutton passed mocking judgment (to great effect) on all of the 2008 presidential candidate logos, commenting on anything from the type choice to the relative size of the R in Rudy Giuliani's logo ("Extra large 'R' to remind you just how Republican he is"). But in his zeal to mock equally, he certainly got one critique wrong: Obama '08.

[Disclosure: I'm not a partisan of Obama, and this post is not an endorsement of his campaign or big smile, just a post commenting on a logo.] From the day this logo was unveiled I received many e-mails asking whodunit and commenting how much they liked it and how different it was from all other Presidential candidate logos. Ever. The logo was designed (jointly or separately, depending of what you read into each firm's blurb) by Chicago-based Sender LLC and mo/de: "We were looking at the 'o' of his name and had the idea of a rising sun and a new day," explains Sol Sender, "The sun rising over the horizon evoked a new sense of hope." Sutton at least got the sun rising part right. "Undefined", on the other hand, might be this logo's strongest asset and the result of clever designers not someone "too inexperienced".

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ARMIN VIT
Graphic designer, writer, lecturer at School of Visual Arts and co-founder of UnderConsideration
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