POLITICO has an article that assesses the relative merits or crappiness of 2016 presidential campaign logos. And it’s funny, because the one for Hillary shows designers/critics saying, on the one hand: “It embodies all the best qualities of the Obama “O”, yet goes to another symbolic level: the future lies ahead, and H (Hillary) will take the country forward.”
Um, I’m not going to list their negatives because I think they miss the point. But first of all, the Obama “O” is one of the best campaign logos of all time, and a great piece of graphics work. The Hillary “H” is not. But one thing I can say is to look at the color of the arrow in the “H” logo: it’s red, isn’t it? And what’s the color of the Republican Party? It’s red, isn’t it? And what direction does the arrow go? To the right, right? And what direction is the Republican Party ideologically? To the right, right? And what’s a major criticism of Hillary from Democrats? She’s not left-wing enough, right? And so to me, the visual language of the design says: “Hillary will move us to the right (from where we are now).”
Everyone see why I’m reading it this way? Her campaign could have avoided this issue easily had they made the arrow dark blue rather than red, and maybe used red in the white part of the “H” instead. Then there’s no way to misread it, unless you read from right to left. And lots of people do, so obviously this logo seeks to discriminate against people who read right to left: I’m so offended! I hope she’ll apologize soon, because if you’re not apologizing, you’re not really speaking to the values and sensitivities of today’s Americans, right?
But what Hillary’s 2016 campaign logo really ought to be is this:
HILLARY 2016
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Here’s the POLITICO article about the campaign logos:
