I’ve discussed the Obama campaign logo and visual identity previously and with the polls showing, if the election were held today, Obama winning well over 300 electoral votes, Brand Obama has reached national saturation. Besides his policy positions (the superiority of which I won’t discuss here) the focus has been on his campaign’s well organized and executed campaign, including the very well developed visual identity. But the madness below has to stop. Please.

This is of course in response to Senator McCain’s bizarre third person soliloquy on house rescue plans culminating in the Senator calling Senator Obama, “That one.” The That One ’08 website is fairly funny, and is set to be today’s most emailed link (and make the owner some advertisement money and T-shirt cash).
I feel a bit queasy even calling this out since I don’t believe the author is trained in design, and all of the shibboleths and nomenclature which comes with the profession. But the author’s butchering of Obama’s logo is just horrible; well intentioned, but horrible. I’ve already gotten complaints from my friends questioning why I would complain about something as “trivial” as typeface choice with others positing that they used a different font to differentiate themselves from the campaign. Frankly, I think whomever created this is well intentioned, just design illiterate. Which is fine, because not everyone cares what kerning is or that there are two typefaces used in the NYC Subway system which look very similar (Aksidez Grotesk & Helvetica).
The reason this logo even stand out is because the original is so very well designed and executed. But part of this is the result of the Obama campaign releasing 14 logo versions covering groups as diverse as the LGBT community to sportsmen to Republicans to National Delegates to Environmentalists. There are even third-party logo creators to customize to “O” logo. You don’t see McCain supporters remixing the McCain-Palin logo. Which goes to show that the visual identity which was created around Obama has moved past the simple logo to something which people identify with and appropriate to their own cause or want (myself included). I don’t believe the logo made the man; rather, the logo was created around the man and ideas, which reinforced the visual identity. I would not be surprised to see case studies and undergraduate courses revolving around the Obama visual identity in the near future.
Which brings us back to the remixers and DIY logo enthusiasts: keep on supporting Obama in your way; but please, aspire to make it better. Design a logo we can believe in!