The Obama campaign did such an amazing job marketing itself and it really shows that the power of a logo is its simplicity. The others were all more relevant - most of them were more topical with the "'08" or "change" in them, but the final logo just works so well.<p>Obama's logo reminds me a little of Bank of America's. They both evoke an image of the American flag as well as farming/middle America (BofA's logo looks like farm plots to me and the red/white stripes of Obama's logo make me think the same). The blue semi-circle looks somewhat like the arc of a rainbow over the horizon evoking (for me) a hopefulness that something is better over the horizon and an idea of inclusiveness.<p>It's one of the best logos I've seen. I'm guessing he'll use it again in 2012 as it's an instantly recognizable symbol.
The unusual thing was that he had a logo at all. That was a clever move. I have to say, though, that the precedents of political organizations having logos are not that great.
There are some other unusual aspects of the Obama logo not mentioned.<p>- They used a much brighter and more intense blue, almost cyan. Even though blue is the Democratic color, they tend to fall back on very conservative navy blues. Obama's blue isn't afraid to be a liberal, and it doesn't think it has to crush your hand in a handshake.<p>- This logo is about equally targeted to online and offline campaigns and takes advantage of ubiquitous digital printing. It breaks with 70s-style solid colors and offset printing, and embraces subtle gradations (although it can still be rendered in solid colors for media like baseball caps).<p>- It is assumed that the logo will be modified for special interests by amateurs, especially for online campaigns. This is anathema to most designers, by the way. The typical logo comes with a little rulebook telling you how can and can't use it. Mostly can't. I think the first instance of this kind of logo was Tux the Penguin.
These logos were seemingly scraped from this video with the designer describing the creation process:<p><a href="http://www.vsapartners.com/news.asp?article=70" rel="nofollow">http://www.vsapartners.com/news.asp?article=70</a>
My co-worker wrote about the genius of the Obama campaign logo earlier this year:<p><a href="http://www.herecomesthescience.com/2008/02/06/the-genius-of-the-obama-campaign-logo/" rel="nofollow">http://www.herecomesthescience.com/2008/02/06/the-genius-of-...</a><p>He shows the other campaign logos for comparison and it's pretty amazing how similar the other logos look to each other.
I liked the post-election New Yorker cover:<p><a href="http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341cc90353ef010535f2333d970b-pi" rel="nofollow">http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341cc90353ef010535f...</a>