Hotcards, Full Color Printing In The Nation

Half super-cool, half folksy grassroots, the print designs of Barack Obama’s campaign are next under the lens in our review series.

You can blame it on the internet, on customize-your-life reality shows, or just on the changing times, but it's a fact that we, as a country, are becoming increasingly design-conscious. Everything's gotta look good, and that includes our President. With this in mind, it's interesting to note that out of all the candidate's running for a shot at the White House, Obama seems to be the only one that's not just message-concious, not just building-the-culture-conscious, but actively design-conscious.

The Obama campaign’s print designs come from the other side of the spectrum to Clinton’s classic styles. His campaign signage is all very cool, very modern, and as such, very appealing to design snobs like myself. At the same time, Obama rallies are generating the biggest turnout of homemade signage of any of the candidates. This contrast creates the comfortable blend of hipness and down-home-iness that’s one of the signatures of his popularity.

If this was a cool logo contest, there’d be no contest. Obama has the best logo of anyone running for President, by far. It’s pretty, it’s inspiring, and best of all, it’s the most original design we’ve seen on a campaign sign in years.

Also unlike Hillary, the Obama camp has opted for signage that is clean, simple, and consistent. All his signs look the same, proclaiming “Obama08” with a URL underneath. The uniformity is soothing and totally acceptable because the design is so pleasing. When you’ve got a good thing going, there’s really no reason to mess with it.

Slight variations come in the form of a white vs. blue background, and occasionally, a dark blue, rather than pale yellow sun. Why is the sun occasionally dark blue? Personally, I have no clue. Is it the moon? Is it an eclipse? Is it, dare I say, a printer error?

Of course, supporters can also have their own signs printed for rallies and gatherings, so you never can tell what the Obama camp is generating, and what is being done independently. Part of the campaign's charm comes in it's enthusiasm for the designs of supporters, although I'm sure at least one Obama print designer out there cringes everytime she sees a knockoff of her work in the sea of signage. This blurring of the line between what is "officially Obama," and what's just crowd energy has already shown itself to be a major, major strength, and liability of the campaign.

All in all, Obama’s print designs reflect the nature of his campaign: new, fresh, totally appealing, and potentially a rabbit hole of intrigue. The boldness of his designs and their accompanying message that speaks of a different, brighter future cater to design snobs and the average (design-conscious) joes alike. Certainly, if nobody got to vote but printers and designers, he’d have this thing in the proverbial bag.