Obama Logo Design (2 Parts)
Creative director Sol Sender tells the story of conception and birth of the Obama 08 logo, including the strategy behind it, developmental concepts and finalist designs for the identity not chosen by the campaign. Sender, now a strategist with design agency VSA Partners in Chicago, was creative director and principal of his own design firm, Sender LLC, when he was hired to create the campaign logo. In the fall of 2006, Sender and his team were engaged to do the work by MODE, a Chicago-based motion design studio with an existing relationship with David Axelrod, the Obama campaigns chief strategist. Obama 08 campaign took on design responsibility for the logo in mid-2007, and extended the identity across multiple applications.
Part 1
Part 2
First off: Thank you guys for clearly writing in your body copy that this project was not a VSA project and the only relationship it has to VSA is a guy who worked on it now works for VSA. It would be great if you were to modify your headline to more accurately reflect the relationships involved in doing the work. Currently, it’s misleading. If you watch the video Part 1 intro, it’s interesting that VSA put its brand mark on it. And listen to the edit carefully—in context, it sounds like VSA created the mark for MODE in concert with VSA. In all of the dialogue about “no spec” and “greenification”, I’d be interested in a dialogue about appropriate attribution of credit for work done. I’m surprised to see an esteemed institution like VSA skirting this line so closely. I don’t understand the motivation. If you have any insights, I’d appreciate it.