I was just reading an interesting article about the Obama campaign’s logo design efforts. Apparently, the designer Sol Sender had never done political campaign logo work before. Which I think was a good thing, because the field isn’t exactly on the cutting edge and could definitely use some new blood. In fact, most political campaign identity work doesn’t revolve around logos at all, but rather cheesily rendered logotypes.
I’ll admit I’ve done my share of those. At the campaign consulting firm I worked at, they actually had a sheet printed out of 20 or so logos they had already created and basically told me to “just do something like this.” You have to pick your battles and since I was new to campaign work [as in, I had just walked in the door 20 minutes earlier], I decided to roll with it that day.
The Sol Sender story also nicely illustrates a point I have been trying to make with clients and agencies for years: just because someone has never done a particular type of project before doesn’t mean they cannot do it. As graphic designers, we have a skillset that is widely transferable. And we have the smarts to apply those skills to a new task — in fact most of us already find ourselves doing this every day. So, don’t “misunderestimate” us!
At any rate, Sender definitely raises the stakes, and for this we can all be grateful. Hopefully this will usher in a new era of more sophisticated and nuanced campaign branding work.
It’s really interesting to see the earlier renditions posted in that article. Apparently this was one of those jobs where the final just popped out at Sender. I know how that goes: sometimes you just nail it. But you still have to flesh out all the options to make sure. Like when you find the perfect dress, but you still peruse the store to see what’s all there before making your purchase.
I also like the name Sol. Like Sol LeWitt. Nice name.