I love retro design and I was inspired by this example from Celebration Of Vintage and Retro Design by Smashing Magazine. I figured it’d be easy to make programatically, and I call the effect a “thoven”:

This past Valentine’s day Julie and I had dinner at Typhoon. She lost her class ring earlier in the day and fretted about it every once in a while, saying that it felt really weird not to have her class ring. During dinner, while others were having their Valentine’s dinner as well, she looked at her finger and exclaimed,

“Geez, my ring finger feels really empty without a ring.”

Barack Obama made a huge impression on me at the 2004 DNC. I knew that he would be running for president at some point, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon. I’ve always wanted Hillary to run, and throughout the campaign I’ve been telling myself that Obama doesn’t have enough experience - that he should spend more time in the Senate. But as I see the diverse support he’s getting, and as I realize his speech at the DNC wasn’t a fluke, I find myself hoping he’s running the White House in 2009.

So let me me list the reasons why the Obama logo is pure genius:

• The O represents Obama and he can use the logo without his name next to it. He’s claiming the O as George W. Bush claimed the W
• The blue O and the red stripes represent the flag
• The red stripes represent the plains, the American farmland
• The O’s whitespace represents the sun, shining over the plains. Because it’s white, it evokes sunrise, not sunset.

So what the logo is trying to say is that there’s a new morning sun (a hope, change) rising over America, and that Obama is it. I don’t think you can find that level of meaning in any other logo, campaign or corporate. For contrast, take a look at the other campaign logos:

Update: Leading up to the campaign this post got hit by a barrage of racist and ignorant comments about Obama and the symbolism of the logo. I’ve collected them here.