Gene Gable & Scott Sheppard discuss design choices for this year’s Presidential Election Campaigns. Gene has been following and researching the campaign from a designer’s perspective and explains how typefaces, colors and other element choices can impact how voters perceive each candidate. For example, in analyzing their font selections, Republican John McCain chose the Optima font which is a more traditional, older, and considered a “safe” type style it also happens to be the type style chosen for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. On the other hand the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama chose a very modern font, Gotham which certainly supports his views and platform.

Gene also points out that the placement of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates in the imagery makes a statement about their views. In the McCain banners, John McCain and Sarah Palin’s name are of equal size and weight. In the Obama images, his name appears much larger than that of his running mate Biden. Republicans tend to use all capital letters where Democrats tend to use upper and lowercase lettering. Gene explains the history and background of the use of the elephant and the donkey. Traditionally campaign color choices involve red, white, and blue which of course can be “officially” selected based on the Pantone Matching System.

You can see examples of this year’s designs on their websites and in their merchandise/store selections at:
McCain: http://www.goptrunk.com/ & Obama: http://store.barackobama.com/

Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson joins us this week for an color update on Pantone Fashion Color Report Spring 2009, which is generally announced during New York Fashion Week, September 5–12, 2008. The Pantone Fashion Color Reports traditionally translate into key Spring 2009 graphic and other designer color choices. Jay reports that there are very few reds, but expect to see many blue and purple hues. There are the earthy tone neutrals and greens as well. Jay also shares some tips on how to create pleasing color palettes at: http://www.mypantone.com, see some unique color combinations at: http://www.colourlovers.com/, Adobe’s AIR application: http://kuler.adobe.com/ or you can use a CMYK tool such as: http://www.master-colors.com/.

Gene and Jay also discuss how most type foundries today are transitioning to OpenType standards which take the best of PostScript and TrueType formats and make them available with expanded character sets and are cross-platform compatible. For more information about Jay and Design Tools visit: http://www.design-tools.com.

Brian Yerkes, Creative Director, Brian Joseph Studios joins Inside Digital Design to share some tips and ideas on how his firm leverages social networking, web 2.0, and blogging tools to expand their business. Brian explains how his approach has helped him not only meet some great designers and potential clients but also helps him keep up his creative inspiration. Brian also shares some tips for other designers on his blog, but reminds other designer bloggers that anything they post online is public and therefore chooses to keep his topics very positive. Brian and Gene also discuss a recent blog entry about “Things Brian Would Tell a Design Student“. Brian shares these tips on the show. Brian is also very active on Twitter, you can follow his discussions at: http://twitter.com/brianyerkes

For more information about Brian, read his blog at: http://www.brianyerkes.com/ or see the creative work of his studio at: http://www.brianjosephstudios.com/

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