In this election season, I've been thinking a lot about the impact of design...Mostly because Obama is so well-branded with the 8,000 iterations of the "O" logo, each . Critics say it's all bluster and no depth, of course, and that a sans serif on the posters does not a president make. Putting aside my own politics and hopefully everyone else's, it is interesting how designers have come out for Obama. I can see why he's liked by the artsy crowd: He's new, youngish and has a face that looks good on paper. Of course the most-seen posters are Shepard Fairey's (the most recent here). But Steven Heller had an interesting blog in nytimes.com about other poster artists crankin' out the same sort of thing to various degrees of effectiveness, including those who are actively getting out the liberal vote at Obama's website.
Does all of this have any kind of impact on influencing voters? Does it just make Obama fans who are designers like Obama even more because they get to add more cool stuff to their poster collections? Does it have any impact on those undecided voters? (And seriously, how could anyone be undecided still? I don't understand that.)
The first design I remember really striking me both for being clever and for being socially impactful was this one, placed in the New York Times by the ACLU in 2000. I still think about it as, "man, I wish I could think of something like that."Can you remember particular designs that have really gotten to you, and actually fulfilled their purposes? Is design drived to social change largely pointless -- preaching to the choir in that it's only really "seen" by people who already agree with its message? Or do you think stuff like this really changes people's minds?
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