In Which I Design A Logo For A Candidate That Could Win An Election

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I did this some weeks ago, and I can't understand why I didn't boast about it. The client seems pretty happy with it.

First a word about Metro. We have this regional government here in greater Portland and it's simply called Metro. It's a unique thing, something no other collection of governments do anywhere else in the United States. There are still cities and counties (an armful of the former and three of the latter) in this area of Oregon and they operate independently of Metro but they also operate interdependently with Metro. Metro, as summed up by Wikipedia, does this:

Metro is the regional government for the Oregon portion of the Portland metropolitan area. It is the only directly elected regional government and metropolitan planning organization in the United States. Metro is responsible for managing the Portland region's solid waste system, coordinating the growth of the cities in the region, managing a regional parks and natural areas system, and overseeing the Oregon Zoo, Oregon Convention Center, Portland's Centers for the Arts, and the Portland Expo Center. It also administers the Regional Illegal Dumping Patrol or RID Patrol which is tasked with cleaning up illegal dumping and it is the designated point of contact for citizens to report illegal dumping in the Portland metro area.

So, Metro provides some of the common bones for what is a colony creature made of of three very large Oregon counties who have their own ideas about how to go and grow. Crazily, it works, but that's the way we Oregonians tend to look at things.

A good friend is involved with the campaign of a man running for the Metro commission, district 3, which is an area which encompasses a large swath of the southwest metro: cities like Wilsonville, Tigard, Tualatin, a big part of Beaverton, and the areas both incorporated and unincorporated adjacent to them. This candidate is Gerritt Rosenthal, and my brief was as kind as it was loose; I was provided with kind of a virtual vision board, a collection of files of some already-extant ideas, background designs and such. they provided a sense of color and style and allowed me to home in on a key design element and a palette to use.

This was the design I developed:

 

The tree was the key element and it brought the heart of everything I saw in the various files together. The palette drew on all the cool blues and greens I saw, and the type went for a solid yet friendly feel. How I settled on letting the tree come up through the G, I couldn't tell you; I thought the two should entwine and just went with the idea. It come out divinely, I thought.

Application used was Inkscape with some support from GIMP. It was rather fun. And should Gerritt win ... and Willamette Week has endorsed him so he has a chance ... at least I'd have the pride of being able to say I contributed a bit.

[logo] I Have A Logo To Donate To The Delphine Campaign

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It's all over the place, and dang that I wasn't able to catch it earlier, but US Senate candidate Marc Delphine today tried to push the envelope on the concept of there being no such thing as bad publicity.

In need of a striking identity for his upstart campaign to replace Oregon senior Senator Ron Wyden his campaign, through processes still unclear, to come up with this:

… which is very dynamic. And also, not terribly original. Because, as any fan of the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets might creditably say, Been there, done that …

… got the t-shirt.

You can go on all you want about derivative logos and matters of difference, but aside from the subtraction of the red circle and the addition to a flappity-flourish on the end of the banner, it's the same thing – flipped. In perhaps a predictable ways, the Delphine campaign appeared to try to eat their cake and still have it by simultaneously accepting responsibility and deferring blame to the mythical volunteer "Aaron". This following from The Oregonian via the progressive website Blue Oregon:

On the logo issue, Delphine said he thought a volunteer named "Aaron" designed it and donated it to his campaign. Delphine said he does not have any other information about "Aaron."

Delphine referred questions about "Aaron" to his Web site administrator, Jerry DeFoe. DeFoe said he does not know who created the logo and questioned whether it is worth pursuing.

I'm hoping "Aaron" is working under an assumed name. Actually, "Aaron" probably is an assumed name, if you follow me.

Look, everyone hopes their political campaign logo can hit a home run, like the President's did. It'd be nice if it would. But my experience runs toward two places here: first, you don't really need a groundbreaking logo for a polticial campaign – all it really has to be is a little bit catchy. I didn't think George W Bush's electoral logo – the W with the flapping American flag – was particularly genius, but it was effective, it filled its role well, and it was memorable enough. Most of the time, if you just catch yourself a few five-pointed stars and got some stripes in there, you'd have a win instead of a PR face plant.

Put my money where my mouth is? Okay. Now, I'm not the kind who votes Libertarian, so this is not an endorsement of Delphine's campaign or even his political presence, but here's something for you – (this has, all of a sudden, turned fun):

There, I fixed it for you. Is it perfect? No. Logo treatments out of the box never are – or rarely are. But there's a star and a blue stripe, suggesting the flag. Red, white and blue – it's all there. Even used the big red star to form the dot over the "i". The flag in the background? Free photo stock from the Stock Xchange (http://www.sxc.hu). It's still a little bright and busy for the foreground, but I'd adjust this in a second round; this is, after all, a rush job. Done in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, for what that's worth.

And you know what? If Mr. Delphine wants to use it – hey, go ahead. Just give me credit.

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