Red, white and blah: Why are these all these 2020 campaign logos so boring? [View all]

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

Twenty-three contenders are marching toward the Democratic Party nomination, each boasting they alone can defeat President Trump in 2020, their campaign logos flashing like rival coats of arms across the front lawns and Instagram feeds of battlefield America.

The military analogy falls apart at this point, because the majority of those 23 campaign logos are as inspirational as bottled-water labels.

Is Jay Inslee running for president or trying to sell us Internet service circa 1995? Who is “Jo Biden”? How on Earth did Amy Klobuchar and Wayne Messam end up with typestyles so similar that their campaigns appear to be subsidiary brands of a company called “for America”?

Half the logos don’t look like anything at all — a soulless collage of red-white-and-blue typography and American flag parts secreted among the letters like a “Where’s Waldo?” puzzle. He’s streaking across the Y in “Yang 2020.” He’s hiding in John Hickenlooper’s mountain range!

“It’s an abomination. It’s just one cliche after another,” said Debbie Millman, who chairs the branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “What we really need now is a new pussy hat — something so powerful in its simplicity people will be able to identify it all over the world. These are stars and stripes and waves and lines.”