And the Best Logo Won!

Yesterday night Obama finally won the democratic nomination. I am not going to enter in the political part of it -who I like and who I don't-, I am going to keep it in the realm of communications.

In that sense, in my humble opinion, Obama has shown clearly that he is a charismatic figure, while Hillary went more for the storyteller type, without having the warmth that a good storyteller needs to enchant new audiences. Either she was ill advised and she took that advice anyway, or she believes she can be something she is not.

But let focus on design. I can't recall when was the last time that I have seen such a nice logo in a political campaign. I can't be really sure why, but most of the logos for the political candidates are plain and nasty. Basic design, obvious ideas. I have the feeling that one of the reasons is because they just don't think it is too important. And they are right, the logo should not be more important than their ideas, but as it happens with a tie or a nice dress, it never hurts to have a good one. Now what makes a good logo good?

Better said, what makes Obama's logo so great? Well, it was able to reinforce the 'brand' (his last name) but at the same time was able to simbolize his main message (hope) with very simple lines. It is clearly very symbolic.

Thanks to such a good design, I have seen his logo morphing into ANYTHING. From the "Kids for Obama" to "Obama Pride" and the logo fusing into each State name, the work of his people in the design area has been awesome and the simplicity of his logo helped getting others -just followers, not people from his official entourage- to play with them, from Logobama (where you can upload a picture to make your own O. logo) to rock concerts posters. Here some examples:

Dave Matthews Concert Poster

Artists for Obama

Enviromentalists, People of Faith and Native Americans

Now I have to say that the idea for Ron Paul wasn't so bad. It was a good starting point. From my point of view it needed a simple tweak to become a great logo.

That very very simple tweak could have been to take out the Ron Paul over the word revolution and just leave the word, highlighting the Ron that revolution includes. Something more in the lines of REVOLUTION or RevolutiON (just, you know, better executed!). Ron Paul was more a revolution that love... love may be what his followers feel for him, but his message is not about love (well. maybe love for the Constitution but is a long stretch). The Ron that you can find hiding in Revolution would have been simpler, more symbolic and easy to use.

As with the Obama logo, a tweak like that would have reinforced and fused his name and his message in a better way.

If you want to see more tweaks to the Obama Logo, you can also visit the "people" section in his website or check in NotCot other things that are out there.