Saturday, June 13, 2020

In Which I Find Something Almost Nice to Say About Trump

In graphic design, everyone knows that a swoosh of some sort is often thought by clients to be a stand-in for a logo. If you don't have a concept, use a swoosh!

That trend seems to have faded, thankfully, but for a long time, you couldn't avoid this look:


When I saw this AP photo by John Bazemore in a Mother Jones article, I thought to myself, Mafia Mulligan is the one person (candidate/product) that legitimately could use a swoosh as part of his "brand" (I hate that word), and I don't know why he hasn't done it:


This overall design is undermined because it includes that weird Top Gun flying motif on the sides. Who needs those red wings and the white extensions off the beginning and ending letters? Those are stupid. But if it were only the blue background and white letters (maybe less condensed, more extended), with the star and year below and two-colored swoosh above, I think it would be graphically quite strong and memorable. Probably objectively better than almost any other recent presidential graphic, in fact.

Thank goodness it doesn't appear to be an official graphic, and whoever made it ruined it with all the extra crap on the sides, which indicate they don't really know what they're doing.

2 comments:

Bill Lindeke said...

It's meant to signify his fake hair, yes?

Daughter Number Three said...

As far as I'm concerned, it is... not sure if the original designer meant it that way.