Campaign fonts: Optima and Gotham reveal the candidates’ "character issues"

Thursday, September 25, 2008

McCain is Optima. Obama is Gotham. We know what the candidates’ slogans say about their campaigns but what do their fonts mean? From POW to GQ, there may be more to design and typefaces than you’d think.
Guest: Emily Oberman, Partner and co-founder of design studio NUMBER 17

Contributors:

Noel King

Comments [3]

Joel Mielke

The guest was dead wrong about Optima. It's an elegant font, it's the bold version that John McCain uses (and which Hermann Zapf was probably compelled to create for the foundy) which is a lumbering, bumbler-of-a-font.

Sep. 27 2008 05:13 PM
Mme_Libn

Actually, I enjoyed this story a lot. On the Media ran a lengthier segment on this topic a few months back that was really fascinating.

Hey, campaigning is advertising. Who can doubt that a lot of thought goes into logos? It's only logical to go to the next step, as in, what do different fonts say about the candidates, and how do customers (whoops, voters) react?

I do have my complaints about this show (apparently, "fast paced and edgy" translates into, bring an interesting person on and cut them off after 90 seconds), but I can't fault them for bringing up this topic.

Sep. 26 2008 11:25 PM
Lee Thornton

Fonts? You have to be kidding me. Please do us all a favor, end this foolishness, send John and Adaora back to TV and bring back Bob Edwards.

Sep. 25 2008 08:20 AM

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