Hotcards, Full Color Printing In The Nation

As election campaigning evolves, it’s becoming increasingly important to design campaign materials for style as much as for message.

There are more people jumping into the race for presidential candidacy every day, but all you ever hear about is Clinton and Obama. Why? Because they’re not just running campaigns, they are actively campaigning to a design-conscious nation.

Over the last decade in particular, we have become ever more obsessed with having style, customization, and inspiring design in our daily lives. You see this at weddings, where marrying couples are going beyond monograms, and having their own logos designed to go on all their printed material. You see this online, where increasing numbers of businesses are focused exclusively on customizing cars, homes, wardrobes, and vacations. We all want our material world to make a personal statement about who we are and what we value, and we want to do it in attractive, unique ways.

In both Obama and Clinton’s campaigns, you can see a careful eye being put to design, in print and online. Obama’s logo, for example, is nothing short of fabulously well designed. A faintly yellow sun (or "O" for Obama) rises over a rolling farmer’s field – one of the quintessential symbols of American freedom and enterprise. But wait! It’s more than a field; it’s a flag, and what grows in this flag field? What’s about to burst into prolific splendor as the rays of the rising "O" hit it? Why democracy, of course!

That’s what you call good design.

It’s simple, it’s meaningful, and more and more every day, people are learning it and associating it with Barrack Obama and everything that he represents. The symbol is so simple and effective, in fact, that the Obama print campaign is breaking traditional campaign sign rules and is allowing the symbol to take up major real estate on their signage.

Most campaign managers will advise against this. The rule is NAME plus one other small detail, and one, maybe two colors. That’s all people have time to take in, they tell us. But Obama’s crew has gone with the colorful symbol AND the campaign URL in big letters along the bottom of their signs. Busier than usual, yes, but these elegant designs are inspiring people. They’re making people feel not just informed, but motivated.

And then you’ve got the Clinton camp, which is pushing a campaign slogan – Let the Conversation Begin – harder than any other campaign slogan has been pushed in recent memory. When you first hear this slogan, it can seem kind of empty or meaningless, and it has already been subject to its share of derision, but as the old admen say, all publicity is good publicity. And I do believe that the more campaigners push it, and the more Hillary reinforces it by speaking at rallies that are basically Q and As with her audience, the more it will continue to develop meaning and resonance for voters.

It’s also a slogan that will remain relevant throughout the election race, with the potential of culminating quite dramatically if Clinton wins and is able to say something like, “Now the conversation can really begin!” Again, we see another design decision that calls to the foundations of our democratic nation – we, as a people, “converse,” we share ideas, we make decisions as a community. And not only that, but it’s the “beginning” of something new; something different, but also something fundamental that’s not so much being born as it is being revived after a period of hibernation under the current Republican government.

That’s what you call good copy. And good copy is an integral part of good design.

Clinton campaigners are certainly investing a lot of faith in their slogan, as many of the camp’s print banners and posters are design around it. Rallies show that Clinton’s print buyers are having many signs printed that contain their colors and slogan and little else.

When you look at the print and web designs of the other candidates, they really don’t hold a candle to these two frontrunners, which is too bad, because there are some fantastic candidates out there that are not getting the media play they deserve. Bill Richardson seems to have some kind of brutally under-designed stripy star going on, while Dennis Kucinich has this overly-busy symbolism involving a globe of the world and a peace sign that looks like it might have been designed by a maiden aunt with artistic dreams but no practical training. These cutting observations are intended not to poke fun, but to point out the relationship between slick design and media butt kissery.

John Edwards is clearly making some kind of effort with his slogan – Will you stand up? – but my prediction is that it’s a little too aggressive to have the potential to really make an impact.

In an election season that is going to go on, and on, and on, it seems like the frontrunners are going to hold their position by virtue of a campaign strategy that seamlessly interweaves issues and speechifying with well-designed, highly customized print and internet advertising. It should be very interesting to see what other candidates come up with in order to stay in the game.