A Standing O For The "O"

The most elegant of the magazine covers for the '08 election was provided, ironically, by The New Yorker magazine with its November 17, 2008 issue. The luminous "O" in the masthead shining down on the Lincoln Memorial in the evening was an elegant version of the most recognizable political symbol in more than a generation. The memory of The New Yorker's earlier cover in the summer that portrayed the Obamas as terrorists was gone in the blink of an eye. The graphic style writer for the NY Fishwrap interviewed the lead designer of the Obama "O." If this is (fair & balanced) visual communication, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
The “O” In Obama
By Steven Heller


Clockwise from left: Aaron Daye/The Gainesville Sun; Monica Almeida/The New York Times; Monica Almeida/The New York Times; Zach Boyden-Holmes/The New York Times

At the end of 2006, Mode, a motion design studio in Chicago, approached Sol Sender, a graphic designer, to create a logo for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The resulting “O” became one of the most recognizable political logos in recent history. I spoke with Mr. Sender a few days after the election to discuss the evolution of his design.

Steven Heller: How did you get the job of designing the Obama logo?

Sol Sender: We got the job through Mode. Steve Juras, a classmate of mine from graduate school is the creative director there. They have a long-standing relationship with AKP&D Message and Media, a campaign consulting firm led by David Axelrod and David Plouffe among others.

Q: Have you done other political logos in the past?

A: No, we had not.

Q: I have to ask, since many agencies that do political campaigns are simply “doing a job,” did you have strong feelings one way or the other for the Obama candidacy?

A: We were excited to work on the logo and energized by the prospect of Mr. Obama’s campaign. However, we didn’t pursue or develop the work because we were motivated exclusively by ideology. It was an opportunity to do breakthrough work at the right time in what’s become a predictable graphic landscape.

Q: How many iterations did you go through before deciding on this “O”? Was it your first idea?

A: We actually presented seven or eight options in the first round, and the one that was ultimately chosen was among these. In terms of our internal process, though, I believe the logo — as we now know it — came out of a second round of design explorations. At any rate, it happened quite quickly, all things considered. The entire undertaking took less than two weeks.

Q: How did David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, respond to your initial presentation?

A: Mode handled that. My sense was that there was a lot of enthusiasm about the options we developed. I was part of a presentation with Mode and Mr. Axelrod to evaluate the final two or three options. There was a general sense that they were all good, but we felt strongly that the chosen logo was the most powerful one.

Q: Did Barack Obama have any input into the symbol at all?

A: None that was directly communicated to us. I believe he looked at the final two or three options, but I wouldn’t be able to accurately portray his reaction.

Q: What were you thinking when you conceived this idea?

A: When we received the assignment, we immediately read both of Senator Obama’s books. We were struck by the ideas of hope, change and a new perspective on red and blue (not red and blue states, but one country). There was also a strong sense, from the start, that his campaign represented something entirely new in American politics — “a new day,” so to speak.

Q: Were you responsible or cognizant of how many variations and applications were possible when you first introduced the “O”?

A: Honestly, we initially saw the mark through the lens of our work on more traditional consumer or corporate identity systems, and were concerned about it being misused. In retrospect, I think that was a narrow viewpoint. But this anxiety came before the campaign built such a strong internal design team.

Various vendors needed to reproduce the mark on signs, banners, and they needed some rules. So our initial concern was compliance and consistency. Having said that, we did think it was a strong mark — strong marks have the potential for broad successful application and viral growth — and we were cognizant of its possibilities. We saw (and visualized as part of the creative process) buttons, billboards, ads, Web banners, T-shirts and hats. We did not foresee the scope of the variations and the personal “ownership” that emerged, though.

We handed the logo and design assets off to the campaign in the summer of 2007. From that point on, everything that you’ve seen was done by the campaign, including the “demographic” variations of the logo. They also evolved the typography to uppercase, incorporated Joe Biden’s name and added a white line around the mark.

Q: Did you have any qualms about this symbol? Did you ever think it was too “branded” and “slick”?

A: We didn’t, though there were certainly instances where we sensed a need to be careful about its application. We never saw the candidate as being “branded,” in the sense of having an identity superficially imposed on the campaign. The identity was for the campaign, not just for the candidate. And to the degree that the campaign spoke to millions of people, it may have become a symbol for something broader — some have termed it a movement, a symbol of hope.

Q: Do you think the “O” had any major contribution in this outcome?

A: The design development was singularly inspired by the candidate’s message. Like any mark, the meaning and impact really come from what people bring to it.

Q: Now that Mr. Obama is President-elect Obama, do you see the “O” as having another or extended life?

A: Well, the “O” was the identity for the Obama ’08 campaign and the campaign is over. That doesn’t mean that the mark will be forgotten; I think the memorabilia from this campaign will have a long shelf life and will stand as a visible symbol of pride for people who supported the candidate and for those who see it as a representation of a watershed moment for our country. As far as having another life, I can’t say. Perhaps the 2012 campaign will hark back to it in some way.

[Steven Heller is the co-chairman of the MFA Design program at the School of Visual Arts. He writes the “Visuals” column in the New York Times Book Review. He is the author of the forthcoming Iron Fists: Branding the Totalitarian State.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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Happy (Fair & Balanced) Thanksgiving!

The Separatist sojourn in the Netherlands preceded their errand into the wilderness of New England in 1620. These believers brought a Dutch hymn with them to Plymouth and "We Gather Together" remains as the quintessential Thanksgiving anthem. This blog appreciates good writing and the lyrics of this hymn are as powerful in 2008 as they were in 1597 when the Separatists first heard them. The story of this hymn illustrates the dark and bloody ground of hymnody among U.S. religionists. If this is (fair & balanced) faith in faith, so be it.

[x YouTube/Shgoh2006 Channel]
"We Gather Together To Ask The Lord's Blessing" (1597)
By S.H. Goh

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!

We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant,
And pray that Thou still our Defender will be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

[x Wall Street Fishwrap]
A Hymn's Long Journey Home
By Melanie Kirkpatrick

Its mention of God makes it verboten in schools today. But not too many years ago this was the season when teachers would lead their students in the great ecumenical Thanksgiving hymn, "We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing." It's a singable melody, and the stirring lyrics speak directly of the Pilgrims' experience in overcoming religious persecution.

Or do they? With the exception of Native Americans, we're all the descendants of those who came to the New World from somewhere else. So too, it turns out, did "We Gather Together," whose origins are Dutch and speak of religious persecution that predates the first Thanksgiving. It's appropriate that a hymn we sing to celebrate a quintessentially American holiday is, like most of us, a transplant.

The melody can be traced back to 1597 and is probably older than that. It started out as a folk song, whose secular lyrics set a decidedly nonreligious tone. Wilder dan wilt, wie sal mij temmen, the song began, or Wilder than wild, who will tame me?" Folk melodies have a way of wanting to be sung—think "Greensleeves," which has numerous sets of lyrics associated with it—and Wilder dan wilt was no exception.

Its transformation into the hymn about overcoming religious oppression began on January 24, 1597. That was the date of the Battle of Turnhout, in which Prince Maurice of Orange defeated the Spanish occupiers of a town in what is now the Netherlands. It appears likely that Dutch Protestants&3151;who were forbidden from practicing their religion under the Catholic King Philip II of Spain—celebrated the victory by borrowing the familiar folk melody and giving it new words. Hence Wilt heden nu treden or, loosely translated, "We gather together"—a phrase that itself connoted a heretofore forbidden act: Dutch Protestants joining together in worship. Its first appearance in print was in a 1626 collection of Dutch patriotic songs, Nederlandtsch Gedencklanck.

It's tantalizing to think that the English Pilgrims—in exile in Holland, the only place in Europe where they could worship freely--might have been familiar with Wilt heden nu treden. There's no record that they were, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. Some of them spoke Dutch, attended Dutch churches and even became Dutch citizens. "It's possible, I'd even go so far as to say it's probable, that the Pilgrims knew the tune," says John Kemp of Plimouth Plantation, the living-history museum of 17th-century America.

But to the Pilgrim mindset, "We Gather Together" would have been a secular song. It wasn't the direct word of the Bible, which meant they would not have sung it at church. The Pilgrims, like the Dutch Calvinists, sang only Psalms in worship and then without musical accompaniment or even harmony, which they considered "man glorifying in man's art," says Mr. Kemp. They saw any song except a Psalm as a violation of the commandment against idolatry.

So how did "We Gather Together" get from a 17th-century Dutch songbook to 20th-century American churches and schoolrooms?

One answer is Dutch settlers, who brought it with them to the New World, perhaps as early as the 1620s. The hymn stayed alive in the Dutch-American community throughout the centuries, says Emily Brink of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Mich. In 1937, when the Christian Reformed Church in North America—a denomination that began with Dutch immigrants who sang only Psalms—made the then-controversial decision to permit hymns to be sung at church, "We Gather Together" was chosen as the opening hymn in the first hymnal.

Another answer has to do with a Viennese choirmaster by the name of Eduard Kremser, whose arrangement of "We Gather Together" was published in Leipzig, Germany, in 1877. Enter Theodore Baker, an American scholar studying in Leipzig. Baker translated the hymn into English in 1894 as a "prayer of Thanksgiving" to be sung by a choir.

From there it was an easy step to congregational singing. According to the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, which maintains a database of popular hymns, "We Gather Together's" first appearance in an American hymnal was in 1903. Over the next three decades it showed up in an assortment of hymnals in the Northeast and Midwest and in school songbooks. Its "big break" came in 1935, says Carl Daw, executive director of the Hymn Society, when it was added to the national hymnal of the Methodist-Episcopal Church.

The association with Thanksgiving helped popularize the hymn, and the country's experience with war also contributed to its spread. "By World War I, we started to see ourselves in this hymn," says Michael Hawn, professor of sacred music at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology. Even more so in World War II, when "the wicked oppressing" would have resonated with a public engaged in the fight against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. "People take stock of themselves at Thanksgiving," he says. "We've all survived some turbulent times."

"We Gather Together" has all the elements that make a hymn great, says Prof. Hawn. Its melody is accessible, it has a catchy "incipit" or opening phrase, and it has a message that unfolds through the stanzas and carries the congregation with it to an uplifting conclusion: "O, Lord, make us free!"

On Thanksgiving Day, that's a sentiment that all Americans, wherever we are gathered, can share.

[Melanie Kirkpatrick is the associate editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Kirkpatrick received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a master's degree from the University of Toronto. She was a Gannett Newspaper Foundation Fellow in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee of Princeton-in-Asia, an internship program in Asia for young college graduates.]

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"O-phoria"? Quick, "Put De Lime In De Coconut" Until BoBo Boy Feels Better!

The more thoughtful of the NY Fishwrap's token Op-Ed Righties — BoBo Boy (author of Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class And How They Got There) — disclaims his own infection with "O-phoria," the 2008-equivalent of Beatlemania. To this blogger, it appears that The Hopester is assembling a team of rivals in his own right. The rivalry is actually a "valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes." Power to the Wonks! Power to the Nerds! If this is a (fair & balanced) appreciation of accomplishment, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
The Insider’s Crusade
By David Brooks

January 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).

The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).

This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.

Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. They typically served in the Clinton administration and then, like Cincinnatus, retreated to the comforts of private life — that is, if Cincinnatus had worked at Goldman Sachs, Williams & Connolly or the Brookings Institution. So many of them send their kids to Georgetown Day School, the posh leftish private school in D.C. that they’ll be able to hold White House staff meetings in the carpool line.

And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition.

The fact that they can already leak one big appointee per day is testimony to an awful lot of expert staff work. Unlike past Democratic administrations, they are not just handing out jobs to the hacks approved by the favored interest groups. They’re thinking holistically — there’s a nice balance of policy wonks, governors and legislators. They’re also thinking strategically. As Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute notes, it was smart to name Tom Daschle both the head of Health and Human Services and the health czar. Splitting those duties up, as Bill Clinton did, leads to all sorts of conflicts.

Most of all, they are picking Washington insiders. Or to be more precise, they are picking the best of the Washington insiders.

Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced “fresh faces” to change things. After all, it was L.B.J. who passed the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, because he is so young, Obama is not bringing along an insular coterie of lifelong aides who depend upon him for their well-being.

As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory. One may not agree with them on everything or even most things, but a few things are indisputably true.

First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence. Orszag, who will probably be budget director, is trusted by Republicans and Democrats for his honest presentation of the facts.

Second, they are admired professionals. Conservative legal experts have a high regard for the probable attorney general, Eric Holder, despite the business over the Marc Rich pardon.

Third, they are not excessively partisan. Obama signaled that he means to live up to his postpartisan rhetoric by letting Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship.

Fourth, they are not ideological. The economic advisers, Furman and Goolsbee, are moderate and thoughtful Democrats. Hillary Clinton at State is problematic, mostly because nobody has a role for her husband. But, as she has demonstrated in the Senate, her foreign-policy views are hardheaded and pragmatic. (It would be great to see her set of interests complemented by Samantha Power’s set of interests at the U.N.)

Finally, there are many people on this team with practical creativity. Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests. Dennis Ross, who advised Obama during the campaign, is the best I’ve ever seen at this, but Rahm Emanuel also has this capacity, as does Craig and legislative liaison Phil Schiliro.

Believe me, I’m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haut-bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He’s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.

[David Brooks is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times and has become a prominent voice of politics in the United States. Brooks graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983 with a degree in history. He served as a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception, a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly, and a commentator on NPR and "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." Brooks has written a book of cultural commentary titled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Brooks also writes articles and makes television appearances as a commentator on various trends in pop culture, such as internet dating. He has been largely responsible for coining the terms "bobo," "red state," and "blue state." His newest book is entitled On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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