Design with a big O: On developing Obama’s campaign identity

While Barack Obama apparently did many things right on his campaign, possibly the most visible mark of success was his ubiquitous graphic design identity. Now that the dust of Election 2008 is settling, Sol Sender, who along with Andy Keene and Amanda Gentry, designed the identity, is discussing how the logo came to be. Fitting Obama’s theme of “change,” the campaign didn’t go with seasoned political marketers but with MODE, a Chicago motion-graphics firm that had never done a political identity before. “The design expression was so constrained and so bland for so many years in politics,” Sender says. “I think we had a fresh approach because we’d never worked on a campaign before” — and, of course, the power of the logo had a lot to do with “the power of the candidate’s message.”

Surveying competitors in the ’08 race and noting that “there were no real logos to speak of,” he and his team created, over two weeks, seven or eight options for the campaign.

Watch the videos, created by VSA Partners, where Sender now works as a strategist, then take a look at some of logo options Obama’s campaign had to choose from, after the jump.

Sender discusses the design process…

…and then how the identity went viral:

Before design began, the team looked at the kind of vocabulary that has dominated presidential campaigns:

A few of the eight design concepts presented to the Obama campaign:

Here’s the runner-up, ultimately beaten out by the red, white and blue Obama “O” logo we’ve all seen a million times:

And one of the many viral permutations — which ranged from Obama cookies to DIY t-shirts — of the identity:

Related:
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(Hat-tip Tom Elko.)