Designing Obama

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A political campaign is a thinly veiled form of advertising, but logo design—one of the oldest branding techniques of the ad game—has historically been cast aside by political world, which prefer to restrict its bumper stickers and promotional materials to a sea of bland stars and stripes. Until Obama ’08. At once traditional and innovative, the Obama rising sun-logo was a breakthrough in modern campaign design, an iconic image from the moment it was first unveiled.

And the buzz hasn’t ended with the campaign. On Thursday evening a crowd gathered at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University for Designing Obama,” a sold-out lecture given by the men behind the symbol—Sol Sender, the logo designer, and Scott Thomas, the director of new media design. There’s a pretty thorough rundown of Sender’s presentation on his company website, giving a summary of the design process, and a rundown of all the rejected images.

The final Obama logo entered back into public debate when it was ripped off by Pepsi. The company claimed their redesign was completely independent of the campaign’s logo, until they began plastering the eerily similar image on billboards reading “Hope” in cities across the nation. However, Sender claims the success of the logo has more to do with the momentum behind its message than the image itself. “One of the really magical aspects was that people just took
[the design] and did all these things with it…a brand like Pepsi would kill for
that,” explains Sender.

The most informative moment of the lecture took place during the Q&A section. The art-student  crowd was anxious to know if Obama’s design aesthetic would usher in a new need for exciting graphic design in the political sphere. Surprisingly both designers were skeptical. “I’m not sure you can do a transformative thing like this unless you have a really transformative candidate,” says Sender. Neither Sender nor Thomas have any plans to continue on with campaign design: Sender has returned to his firm, and Thomas is working on a book about his experience.

And you certainly won’t see Thomas’s mark on the whitehouse.gov sight. According to Thomas, the Bush administration extended their web designer’s contract for two years into Obama’s term. So until then, it’s just same old.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate