Design we can believe in.

First of all, for the sake of public partisanship, let me state how enthralled I am about the election, not only for purposes of my politics, and for the future of our nation, but from the standpoint of a discerning aesthete; most certainly the highly superiour designed campaign won. In just about everything, Barack Obama's campaign design team took the lead in making politics out of the realm of lethargic, dusty speeches and issues that only really apply to our parents, to the forefront of young peoples' interest. Not to say that the campaign 'made politics sexy' because I feel as if that would have been a bit gimmickey, much like the whole Sarah Palin thing, but that the campaign had a stylish, design first, new, handsome look that showed a representation of a better more attractive future. I can not really recall at any point during the long, arduous season a time in which I wasn't impressed with Obama materials. Especially in regard to the website. I believe that a well designed, aesthetically charming web design keeps the visitor clicking links, spending more time and discovering, aside from ease of use and functionality, this is a huge factor in visit time for a website, and for said site to be in regard to a candidate for president, this is a victory in itself.

Lets take a look at the website for Barack Obama as of Nov. 20th, post victory.
(PS, i really dislike the way that blogspot uploads content and then makes you save it on your desktop and doesn't give you full control over the HTML of images, so I'm just tagging all of this stuff in)



This is the front page, and I will go over a bit of the other content involved, but this is obviously a good starting point. One thing i really appreciate in a web design is when links, buttons and pulldown menus have a bit of 'build into the design' look. Meaning that the parts all create one whole, that essentially the entire table looks like a poster, instead of it being a bunch of individual parts standing alone and making some sort of mosaic of pieces. From top to bottom, especially from the first images of the candidates, and the campaign seal, to the bottom of the graphic with the 'Change Can Happen' portion, that entire section could very easily be one piece of graphic, as opposed to looking like however many parts all the links, images, text, etc. could be, (i counted 24 different elements). There are several well done gradient 3d style red buttons, the pulldown menus at the top look built into the design. the only complaint I have is that the pulldown menus might look a bit better with a bit of transparency, so one would never loose sight of the candidates underneath, but maybe a lack of browser universality caused this. My absolute favourite part of the design of the whole site is the constant use of white to blue graphics used on almost all the site elements, with hints of red. The overall art direction is much more focused on the Blue Democrat theme than the overkill Red, White and Blue, apple pie, baseball, hot dogs, cowboys and blond girls America themes. The hints of red are always really nice, and are used to draw attention to logos, links and information. Its very smart eye direction. Overall i really loved looking at Barack Obamas website throughout. 

For reference, this is what his opponents current website looks like:



Needless to say its in no way as attractive as President Elect Obama's design. It very much shows the kind of "puke of 1,000 parts" kind of design.The really strange top banner with four different elements, the campaign symbol, portraits, background crowd sort of image and the slogan piece all look glued together like a 10 year old's collage project, very pitifully done. (where for reference, the top banner section on Baracks page has a much greater sense of fusion and resembles one image as opposed to several poorly photoshopped elements). The portrait of Sarah Palin which I always found to be really unflattering. the awfully obtrusive "find your polling place" banner that actually looks like it might be a banner advertisement from Myspace where you might kill ducks or pinch bimbos booties for an Xbox 360. The really fat, bold fonts were really poor choices and it makes me think that the McCain design team were really catering the design towards elderly voters (why are they using the Internet?). The boxes on the left side with their 5-10px white borders are horrendous, but not as bad as the "create your own piece of the web on AOL" style buttons scattered everywhere. If you will notice, take a look back at Baracks page for a minute, and then look at Johns page, the glaring difference is in the colour scheme. Barack keeps a tight red white-to-black and blue scheme with Blue being an overall colouring, and Red being a eye catching navigational device. Whereas Johns most eye catching colours are... Green and Yellow? I wasn't aware those were part of the flag, unless you count the Don't Tread On Me snake, who had a bit of yellow to him. Also, am i crazy or is the background colour for the page not blue... but blue-green? And do take note that in the video background, the American flag is not only hung vertically, but if rotated to the right to be horizontal, would be upside down. oops.  Its just very scattered and its possible to use these designs as a microcosm for the actual campaigns themselves, one of them being the new, fresh, clean, somewhat sexy, innovative, hopeful design of tomorrow, and the other being the same old website you've seen for some soccer mom selling cookies and cute custom designed Tupperware. And obviously, any instance of John McCains face on anything cant possibly be aesthetically pleasing. 




Its just really sad that I am seriously having a hard time figuring out which site design is better, McCain or Nader. Sadly i think Ralph Nader might have won here.


Just for the sake of being fair, here's one piece of Obama campaign material that I'm put off by.


This is a Virginia state Dem's button. Mark Warner is a former Governor of Virginia and won the Senate seat easily, in fact he was the first projected Senate win on CNN, its very possible he could run for President in a few cycles. that being said, I really enjoy all of these joint imagery, flawlessly templated democrat support materials, but what really put me off about this is that whoever put these together couldn't have been the same who created the great copy, graphics and art direction because they would have caught the glaring white balance inequities between the two candidates portraits. For your information, and as in short terms as i can explain, white balance refers to the colour temperatures of light, Barack Obama's portrait was taken outside, whereas Mark Warner's was taken inside, you can tell because the overall tinge is red, whereas Baracks color balance is more true to what he looks like. This is so simple to fix, either pick a picture in the same sort of light, or just adjust the color balance on Mark's portrait to match. But that's just me being immensely neurotic, but otherwise, most of the joint candidate materials i saw really went in line with the overall art direction, and McCains materials were really awful.

Speaking of specific materials, here are some things I really like. These are in the People section of Barack Obamas website, and are links to more information about the candidates view for advocacy for specific groups, the following are my personal favourites, Women, Sportsmen, Small business owners, LGBT, Children, Jews, Environmentalists, and GOP.

The Obama for Women symbol is not the most creative, but was certainly pulled off in a classy manner. The Obama for Sportsmen logo is really well done and my favourite of them all, the elk horns and duck conveniently sitting on the line across the background as if in water, the slight rippling reflection below, and the really smartly designed O logo with the darker colour fish in the middle really pops, its gorgeous. The small business design is a nice knew tilted take on the O. The LGBT design is neat and with the exception of the slightly corny rainbow at the top corners, is smartly done. The Obama for Children logo is awfully cute and i would not at all be shocked if a child actually drew it. The Obama for Jews design is also fantastic, mainly because of my affection for non English typography and symbol characters, Hebrew is a really great looking language. For Enviornmentalists is really clean and pops quite nicely, and is an actual appropriate use of green and yellow (unlike his opponents attempt), and finally the qualm i have about the GOP support symbol is that its not blue in the background like the rest, but its a really gutsy and overly clever adaptation of the logo, and mind you without really incorporating the actual GOP elephant design. I must say the O logo had been adapted in many ways elsewhere, but the majority of the Obama team's innovations and customizations of his logo were clean and well designed.  

And the last piece of material here is a press pass:

A lot of complicated design elements are on Obama's page, in his logos, in banners, buttons and whatnot, really marking somewhat of an innovation away from simple copy, simple text and colour, and a few stars, which has always been the norm, especially in regard to McCain's boring line and star posters and symbols.  However with some pieces, such as this press pass, simplicity is most definitely fun as well.  To sum things up, I think if there is a demographic group of politically apathetic design geeks, they'd most certainly punch or touch their vote for Mr. Barack Obama.

I certainly hope you enjoyed my first blog entry, more to come! feel free to comment.