I couldn’t help but notice a few striking similarities between current GOP candidate websites and Obama’s 2008 campaign website and the current White House website.
Glowing Blue Background
It seems that the new political design trend is going to be glowing backgrounds. Most of the candidate’s sites use a glowing blue background of some sort (see newt.org and michellebachmann.com)
Home Icon & Typography
The designers for Ron Paul’s website must have been inspired by whitehouse.gov because the navigation typography is almost identical. The flag icon on whitehouse.gov links to the homepage, while the home icon on Paul’s site links to the homepage. While not similar in design, the unique idea of using a homepage icon in that particular position is pretty similar given the other similarities.
However, I give props to Ron Paul’s web guys for actually making the navigation real text and not images, like the White House site. To be fair, whitehouse.gov has their full sitemap in real text in the footer.
Right Column Shadows
This one is minor, but I had to mention it because of how similar other elements are between whitehouse.gov and Ron Paul’s website. The right column on both sites are the same exact width as well. Inspired much?
The hokey, ‘look inspired and into the distance’ Photo.
Also known as the 40-year-old virgin portrait look. This is only funny because I really want to imagine the photographer holding up a picture of the Obama 2008 website and directing Bachmann to pose similarly. I feel like she forgot where the camera was one other time too… I kid, I kid!
Is there anything wrong with this?
Of course not. There is no copyright infringement here. Is it funny when you notice it? Yes. Mostly because of how different these candidates are from President Obama in every other way.
Here’s to great design that draws some of it’s inspiration from Obama 2008!
Just yesterday, I spoke to Lambda Pi Eta, the communication department’s honor society at Truman State University. I was connected to them by fellow Mountain Dew and Twitter addict, Don Krause (@santee). I was über nervous about speaking, as I always am, but I think I overcame that fear.
I talked about my experience with social media as the owner/designer of Creative Improv and why brands need to care about social media.
A few quick notes, I had tweeted to UPS and FedEx 3 times in the last few days (once during my presentation) and hadn’t received a response from them until just now. @FedExRobin responded – you can see her tweet here.
Check out my presentation below. I recorded it a day after I gave the presentation to the folks at Truman.
Since the 2008 presidential election, I have become aware of design in politics and how the quality and effectiveness of the design effects particular candidates.
As designers, we have a lot of responsibility to design for the greater good and not put forth an image (both meanings of the word) that is misleading, untrue or inciting of any negative action. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have a responsibility to not oversell something or someone, if we want a clear conscience.
Below I’ve outlined a few examples of design that has a played a role in our perception of a the candidate.
A few examples, off the top of my head:
Yes we can… make you think I’m God-incarnate
Overtly and overly optimistic political campaign website for Barack Obama. Did we all really think he was going to be ‘God-incarnate’ and a perfect president (note the glowing blue sky/cloud feel)?
The problem with this website design, as I’m starting to see, is that if I were to design a website for ‘God’ – it would probably look pretty close to this. Same colors. Similar logo. Similar quote in the header (at least the ‘I’m asking you to believe’). This is a problem, because he’s not God, but was pretty much marketed as such.
As I wrote about on this blog in the past – this was a great website design, logo and branding. The best that national politics had ever seen. But my question is: Was it over-selling Obama? Just a bit.
Did we think he would be anything more than a politician with skin on? If we bought into the design/marketing – maybe.
There’s an Alaska-shaped lake in the US, don’tchaknow?
To all you middle school kids who have taken geography, you know this map is NOT accurate. It is outrageously false. I know that Palin’s goal was to express that she was the governor of a state that is very large in comparison to the continental United States. Do you want to highlight something in your career that you only put half your effort toward (Palin resigned before finishing her first term)? Why create something that is false, misleading and very untrue? Clever, maybe – but I don’t see it winning any design awards. This logo opens up the floodgates for more people to question the intelligence of Sarah Palin. Why open that door?
LBJ mushroom cloud commercial
Misleading. Fear-Mongering.
It’s not a direct ‘design’ piece but is marketing and political in nature. The commercial worked and drew on the emotions of the American people. Drawing out the fear of a nuclear war and pointing a finger at Barry Goldwater was the goal of this commercial. It worked, and as Milton Glaser is quoted in this article saying, “And even though you knew it was bullshit, your heart swelled anyway.”
You betcha they’re surveying symbols!
Most recently, this graphic has been the center of debate. I don’t subscribe to the idea that Palin is responsible for the recent Arizona shooting. However, her advertisements and words and those of other talking heads need to be scrutinized when violence against politicians arises. Taking responsibility for your words and actions is a necessity. That means acknowledging when something you say or do is in bad taste, as this graphic was. We learned this as a child – why is it that politicians forget this fundamental rule of responsibility? (Another example is when Sharon Angle’s was quoted about using ‘second amendment remedies’. That is an incitement of violence and nothing less.)
One explanation of this graphic was that it was simply using ‘surveying symbols’. Maybe that was the intention, but how many American’s are surveyors and would get this reference? It’s more likely that it would be interpreted as a gun sight. You can’t tell me that the Palin folks didn’t know this is how it would be inferred? After all, it’s the perfect graphical symbol to appeal to hunters and gun rights activists around the country. If it should have been a surveying symbol, shame on the designer for not correctly ‘visually communicating’ a surveying symbol. My guess is that the designer was directed to use a gun cross hair – and they did that effectively. Palin and others needs to be more careful about the graphics they present and the words they use.
Wrapping up
We have all seen political ads, designs and words that over-reach their boundary. The question becomes – how do we know how over-reaching it is? How do we know how much violence something or someone may incite with their words or ads? The answer is: We don’t. This is why politicians and the designers that work for them need to be held to a very high standard. They need to realize how much sway they have with their ‘supporters’ – especially their fringe supporters.
What political ads, designs and words have you heard or seen recently that were inciting violence or simply overselling something?
Does anyone find it very interesting that Sarah Palin has taken her voice to Facebook and Twitter almost exclusively? She is calling the shots and making the mainstream media report on what she just wrote on these social sites. It is unprecedented that a politician could so overtly avoid any tough questions or interviews and still get the coverage that she gets.
Is this responsible journalism? Is this responsible politicking? (did I just use responsible and politics in the same sentence?)
Your thoughts?
UPDATE:
I just read this interesting article on CNN about why America is growing tired of Palin. I ‘bolded’ the part that seems to echo what I was pinpointing above.
The hope for some Republicans is that Palin will literally tweet her way out of our hearts. The books, the reality TV, the family psycho-dramas, the never-ending internet “thought bubbles” could just be enough to drive even those who like her over the edge. And, sure, we in the press are part of this uber-coverage, behaving as if every 140-character thought is worth some conversation. It isn’t. As Erick Erickson, the editor of the conservative RedState.com and a CNN contributor, told me, it’s not really about what Palin has achieved. “By 2012,” he says, “people are going to be so tired of her they’re going to want to avoid eye contact. It’s not fair, but it’s reality.”
Since it seems like my six-part series on the 2008 presidential election has disappeared within my blog, I wanted to re-highlight it since I spent hours researching various aspects of that election.
This series focuses on the websites of Sen. John McCain and then-Sen. Barrack Obama. It was a culmination of a semester of research in an Advertising course. While I was writing these posts (in the Fall of 2008), I was also producing many 30 second ads (Motion Graphics) supporting the Obama Campaign. These videos will posted in the next blog post.
