Creating Brand Obama – The Story of a New Visual Language

Earlier this fall Barak Obam celebrated the one year anniversary of his election a as president of the United States.
Regardless of whether you are a supporter or not, the making of brand Obama, was a watershed event in politics and graphic design. For the first time, it seemed that the verbal message of a campaign and its visual language joined together to make the sum larger then its parts.

But who are the people who made this happen? And how did they do it?
We devote this post to the people who created this stunning visual language and try to shed some light on their personalities and most importantly, their product.

We start with  a wonderful presentation by Scott Thomas who was the Design Director for Obama’s 2008 campaign.
In this presentation Scott gives an insider view to how things were done. Here we get to find out that it was an online and offline effort. In other words, that the internet played a part here too. A huge part.

Before moving on to more of the work, it is important to remember that the branding strategy was not always so solid, here are a few samples of logos that (maybe thankfully) did not make it. Please make sure to click on the link, there are many more of these to see, and some of them are really good.

Here is a great article about some of the background of why “Brand Obama” is working. One of the most powerful quotes here is:
“…Obama is the first presidential candidate to be marketed like a high-end consumer brand.”

Here is more of the stunning visual work that was created for the campaign:

Here are some shots of the Obama website, which was a major tool in getting Obama elected. Since the election the site has taken a lesser role in the overall strategy, now it is more the Whitehouse website that plays center stage:

The whole story of the campaign branding could be found in a new book “designing Obama”
(for full disclosure,  this is free advertising, we were not paid for this link, we just think it’s cool):



5 Responsesto “Creating Brand Obama – The Story of a New Visual Language”

1. Gail Schopflin says:

   June 6, 2010 at 9:32 am

   hi, thank for this latest information. Therefore, I would like to ask for your accept to add some of this information in my blog. Of course, I will provide a link to your website, as a source of my mentioned information.
2. Gene Latus says:

   June 6, 2010 at 2:47 pm

   Hey, I just forwarded this to some friends, loving it!
   Thanks