Designing Obama
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- toodee
The Obama presidential campaign was an innovation in American politics and American design. For the first time, a candidate used art and design to bring together the American people—capturing their voices in a visual way. The Design Director of the Obama campaign, Scott Thomas, has collaborated with artists and designers to create Designing Obama, a chronicle of the art from the historic campaign.
- detritus0
Soviets did this shit back in the twenties and look where that got them.
- Really, Stalinism can be blamed on graphic design?ukit
- i think what he's saying is it's a form of propaganda.zenmasterfoo
- So is all political advertising then, right?ukit
- poor detritus is crying in the corner now.... nice job ukit!OSFA
- Look where crying got the soviets FFSukit
- hahaha!OSFA
- eh? hardly. What on Earth are you on about, OSFA?detritus
- detritus you're a TOOLspraycanII
- don;t know... things are kinda weird today... i still lov...er admire you sir.OSFA
- OSFA0
Say what you want, but I think the book looks great from a design perspective.
- inteliboy0
that rich blue on the hard cover = yum.
political art, not so much.
- Lillebo0
Looks great! Been waiting for a proper feature story on this campaign from a design perspective. A book is even better...
- zenmasterfoo0
it would be something of interest if the proceeds went to supporting artists causes or amputees or the homeless or dolphins.
- ukit0
^ Communist
- tasty0
Ah the days of yesteryear when people hung photos of the president in their home. No thanks.
Obama's design definitely rallied the youth, hell i saw a kid with an obama tattoo on his leg yesterday.
- flashbender0
It is pretty, but does anyone perceive this as anything more than well packaged propaganda?
- ukit0
Well it could be viewed as a case study in designing for a political campaign...is that worth writing a book about? Sure, why not?
Every political campaign has a logo and design and stuff...the only reason Obama's stood out is because it was somewhat memorable.
- I can agree with thisflashbender
- I think we only paid attention because for once the target voter was closer to us...maikel
- JSK0
- perspective view is cornyspraycanII
- the man does all this, and this is your response?tymeframe
- JSK0
This should be free!
- identity0
I know Scott, the designer of the campaign and publisher of this book.
He can't give it away for free since he has raised the money himself and published the entire 336 pg. book himself, using his collateral, equity, own money, etc...
It IS a beautiful book, with some very thoughtful written entries from Michael Beirut and Steven Heller - as well as every memorable design you remember from the campaign from tons of extremely talented designers and artists.
If you don't want to pay the COMPLETELY REASONABLE price for the $80 / 336pg. book, you can download the iPad app for $5 or download the entire PDF for Free.
Link: http://digital.designing-obama.c…
Scott has his own, at the moment, 1-man shop here in Chicago, works incredibly hard not only on this but a SLEW of great clients and is not making TONS of money on this (the cost to print the first run was MONUMENTAL - the book utilizes imported japanese book cloth (custom made for the book), 3-color foil, embossing, interior of book is 6-color with spot-varnishing and metallics, the paper is a really fine, beautiful stock.
If you all, as designers, can't appreciate the effort and quality of this one-man produced venture, I don't know what you could appreciate.
Get one.
- thanks man, it helps to get the story.zenmasterfoo
- no worries. If you are hestiant about buying an $80 book without seeing the interior, I suggest looking at the PDFidentity
- Well said ID... I really like it. Now, since you know Scott, if I buy one can you get it signed? ;)OSFA
- haha - probably :-)identity
- typist0
get one timeline
- OSFA0
I'm waiting for Taschen's Sarah Palin book... should be released along Big Book of Breasts...
- chalk0
Well now I don't need to buy this since I can see the entire thing online.