Everyone is busy with their summations of the Dean candidacy, what went right and what went wrong. See for instance, Timothy Noah’s critique of fake populism in Slate. I don’t really have anything thing to add to the substance of the issue. But since politics is in no small part about style over substance, I can’t help but think about Dean’s graphic design.
You’ve seen it by now, the bumperstickers, the demonstration posters, the yardsigns. All in that Blue, Yellow and White color scheme, bold sans-serif block letters with angular cursive script reading “for America” or “The Doctor is In.”
What can we make of the design?
1) Its maverick nature. None of the rules of campaign signage seem to apply here. No stars, no bordered lines dividing the sign. No generous use of blank space: the letters run almost to the edge. And of course that cursive script, which might belong on a Kellog’s cereal ad, but runs against the gravitas of political advertising design. Jumping out against the stark lines of the Helvetica Black, the cursive seems flip almost. A generous reading of this maverick design may be “Howard’s a rule-breaker who’s going to shake things up, change the way politics as usual is done.” A less generous reading may be “This man isn’t serious about being President.”
2) Its boldness. Before the Bush-Cheney campaign went all gaudy with its 2004 logo in the hopes of winning over those NASCAR dads, their ‘00 signs set big block sans-serif letters in contradistinction to the graceful capitals of Gore-Lieberman’s serif font. From the start Dean seems to be saying, “No wuss here. I can and will take on Bush.”
3) Its liberal-left bent. I don’t know if Dean borrowed his color scheme from Robert Reich’s gubernatorial campaign (or if Reich himself borrowed from someone else), but it’s an almost given that a politician, particularly one running for President, will use red, white and blue. There’s simply not much leeway there. Dean in effect says “I’m not going to wrap myself up in the flag for this campaign” - more than any stated policy position, the choice of color scheme for design reasons rather than jingoism may have endeared him to the wine/latte set and for others identified him as part of that set.
When reading design, one gets into the realm of connotation - dangerous because it’s somewhat subjective (person X may not see what person Y sees) but even more tendentious because its effects aren’t always obvious (person X may be swayed by what person Y sees, but not realize it). Nonetheless, connotation conveys meaning every bit as much as denotative statements, even if the meaning is harder to pin down. In future posts, I’ll take up the other candidates’ design with that in mind.
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