Is it the Medium or the Message? A Designer’s Thoughts on the 2016 Presidential Campaign

I have been thinking about the recent presidential election campaign. During this time of shock and outrage, I have been reading, listening and discerning these perilous times. Here are my thoughts from a creative professional’s perspective.

Political campaigns are borrowing the importance of excellent graphic design and messaging from the most successful corporations and organizations. In 2007, first-time senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the POTUS. Obama’s presidential branding campaign was a success because his communications team saw the potential of an up-and-coming marketing channel: social media. Their branding approach is still being studied in universities and have officially set the bar high in political campaign graphics and messaging. Typically, American political branding campaigns are heavy on targeted messaging and image management but light on excellent visuals. Gaudy Americana graphics figure prominently is most campaigns: red, white and blue splashed on everything with flags, stars, stripes, etc. 

Political branding has always understood that crafted visual images, in and of themselves, do not ultimately capture the hearts and minds of viewers since images need interpretation. Celebrities have learned the hard way when they believe that their face is all people need. Some visuals, like icons, become synonymous with language  such as a stop sign or a bathroom sign. But this semiotic approach involves distilling the image down to its simplest form and using it consistently over a long period of time. (Unfortunately, history is also littered with demagogues who have done this such as Stalin and Hitler.) But in a increasingly pluralistic multicultural democracy, finding common visuals and speech that pull people together is becoming harder to do.

Visual Communications scholar Sol Worth said “Speech requires a clearly defined syntax which allows us to articulate propositions of truth and falsity.” According to Google, syntax means the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language. An image is a socially constructed visual representation that obscures the creator…and has no clearly defined syntax. When viewing an image, one is only a receiver and cannot ask questions because the creator is usually not present. For example, if I asked you to imagine the sun setting, you can see it in your mind because you have probably seen it before in an image or in person. This request also opens the door for listening and possible dialogue which can lead to clarity, persuasion and even healthy disagreement. Now, if I showed you a picture of the sun midway in the sky and asked you if it is rising or setting, would you know? Images cannot completely function like speech. 

If images are worth a thousand words, this allows for greater creativity but also for an endless variety of interpretations. This is one of the reasons why I love graphic design. The creative process can utilize nuance, mystery, re-interpretation and even brashness. Speech can also employ multiple meanings but a clearly defined syntax limits its interpretation to determine its veracity. For instance, when a politician make a gaffe, listeners pounce attempting to ascertain motives. A circus ensues with the politician usually apologizing (confession), admitting choosing the wrong words (misdirection) or claiming someone hacked their social media account (denial). But in an age of moral relativism and constant social media outrage, the latter two are becoming the norm in our online conversations which can make the truth hard to detect. This encourages a media cynicism that revealed itself during this election cycle.

The messaging, not the visuals, is what makes the connection as evidenced by both of Obama’s presidential campaigns:

• Obama’s 2008 campaign slogans: ‘Change we can believe in’ and ‘Yes we can!’
• McCain’s 2008 campaign slogan: ‘Country First’
• Obama’s 2012 campaign slogans: ‘Forward’ which was an extension of his 2008 slogan
• Romney’s 2012 campaign slogan: ‘Believe in America’

This Barack Obama Hope poster was designed by artist Shepard Fairey and became the face of the 2008 Obama election campaign. The artist sold it independently and later Obama’s campaign adopted it. What made this poster famous was it connected to Obama’s messaging and persona: hope in the face of hopelessness. Obama did not just communicate this unwavering optimism. He embodied it as a bi-racial person with an international background. He was the ultimate outsider who sometimes acted more like a preacher or prophet than a politician. When Shepard’s poster went viral on social media, Obama’s brand value went through the roof and his graphics and messaging felt personal to a large swath of the American voting public. He used all marketing channels but he primarily concentrated on their website social media platforms. Youth, minorities, the LGBTQA community and women eventually became the ‘Obama Coalition.’

But what are the results when one utilizes graphic design and messaging unevenly? How would one compare Clinton and Trump?

There is a phrase in marketing: when aiming your message at an audience, use a rifle and not a shotgun. When one fires a shotgun, it spews random pellets. Although it makes a big impact, one isn’t guaranteed to hit the specific target unless at close range. This represents mass media. A rifle, when fired, can hit one specific target at a time from a long distance. Messaging that is too inconsistent and/or broad forces the visuals to do the heavy lifting. Annie Linskey wrote a Boston Globe article earlier this year highlighting how Hillary Clinton campaign’s messaging was not helping her . The quote below is from the article:

Clinton’s ever-evolving message identity highlights a broader critique of her candidacy: that she tries to be all things to all people, and that she does not let voters see who she really is underneath all the image-making.

According to Hillary Clinton’s campaign leaked emails, there was a conversation about the importance of messaging in the campaign. Wendy Clark, an advisor, understood the difference between visuals and messaging when she wrote a response to an email. She said, “To be clear, a logo can communicate and aid attribution of qualities, but it is not a proxy for the messaging of the campaign until they are relentlessly connected and delivered, repeatedly and consistently. That’s when brands take on meaning.”

Even though it seems like the campaign lacked an overall consistent cohesive message, Clinton assembled an all-star roster of well-known New York City designers to assist her campaign:

1. Michael Bierut and Jesse Reed of Pentagram designed the logo.
2. Jennifer Kinon of Original Champions of Design created and maintained the campaign’s visual identity.
3. Other design notables include Louise Fili, Nicholas Misani, Paula Scher, Agnieszka Gasparska and  Tobias Frere-Jones.

She also had a list of famous fashion designers create her tshirts.

Although design author and critic Steven Heller said that Trump’s campaign branding was completely uninspiring, Trump’s messaging was still hitting his intended target. It was digestable, emotional and consistent with his character. Mediocre graphic design did not seem to hinder his campaign because his persona as a reality TV show star and perceived power broker status was integrated with his messaging. He has been in the American consciousness for some time and utilized this influence to call Clinton and the media out.

The truth is, Clinton’s political track was pitted against Trump’s reality show success. Even though she was most qualified to be president, Trump turned this into a disadvantage. Flashback: Obama positioned himself as a Washington outsider and used the same tactic on Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary election and John McCain in the general election. Messaging was a big part of this. Both Clinton and Trump supporters were watching this exchange including swing voters. 

When Trump’s erratic Twitter rants started impacting his messaging, his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway took away his Twitter account. She got him back on message and also made sure he was interacting regularly with a certain segment of voters Clinton ignored. This reinforced Trump’s message in spite of his lackluster graphics and many offensive remarks.

Visual culture is everywhere and fast becoming visual noise. But cutting edge graphic design tends to emanate from or near our major cultural centers, i.e. large American cities. This is where Madison Ave, most American and multinational media corporations, professional sports franchises, influential universities and well known museums are located. All of them use corporate style graphic design (inspired by Swiss design) to support their messaging. So, its shouldn’t surprise any designer that Clinton tapped elite New York City designers.

Truth be told, graphic design has become the visual language of the professional class that has been exposed to it either through geography, higher education, entertainment, family legacy, entrepreneurship and/or corporate america. Cultural elites trust what graphic design has to offer using it for personal branding and their entrepreneurial aspirations. Those of us who were not born cultural elites have assimilated into the professional class through education. Graphic design has always been connected to the media. Since the digital revolution, it has found new arenas to display itself and more people have become DIY content creators. But we seem to forget that there are whole groups of people in this country who still believe the media is against them. I come from a ethnic group that has been historically marginalized and branded with certain pathologies. So, I am very aware that graphic design, advertising and the media can promote stereotypes. This gives me a unique perspective and a skeptical heart concerning the creative industry.

Although the media (and the internet) help spread graphic design to the masses, media fragmentation allows us to search for and receive the content we want, high or low quality. Although fake news stories has been a product of this fragmentation (print and digital), no one seems to be bothered by how the near monopolization of media outlets through the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has also contributed to this problem. I have observed consistent targeted ‘fake’ messaging travel pretty far through narrow and mainstream marketing channels. Have you ever heard of the story that the president of Procter & Gamble announced on a popular talk show that he donates company’s profits to the Church of Satan? How about the story that Tommy Hilfiger does not want Blacks and Asians wearing his clothes? Both stories are from the 1990s and both are fake. After all, there are 10-year hoaxes still being shared on Facebook!

Questionable consistent messaging rarely ever has good graphics and can still have an impact. But the same can NOT be said about good design and inconsistent messaging. The media reported Trump’s every utterance giving him a messaging platform for angry voters while the Clinton campaign harnessed excellent graphic design and celebrity branding…and still lost. 

So, is it the medium or the message? The late Canadian professor Marshall McLuhan was right when he made his famous statement. But he said this in an age of mass media TV domination. Today, we have fragmented marketing channels focused on text, some focused on image, some focused on moving images, some focused on audio and some focused on all of them. I think McLuhan’s mantra needs to be rethought. Because of social media, the internet, cable, network TV and radio, information moves at different speeds now and this produces different effects.

I wouldn’t say that graphic design and messaging won or lost this election. There are other factors to consider as well. But I would say that the medium and the message have become more important since Obama. When used well, they can spark some amazing movements influencing behavior, policies and culture. For example, social media (messaging) and graphic design aided the beginnings of the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall St. movement and Black Lives Matter. But the dark side is when we receive our information from only one marketing channel and forget that this same channel…wants to sell us something. Wael Ghonim helped touch off the Arab Spring in Egypt. His TED Talk about social media is an ominous warning. Here is an excerpt:

 “…while it is true that polarization is primarily driven by our human behavior, social media shapes this behavior and magnifies its impact.” 

It is easy to forget that narrow marketing channels can give us tunnel vision. When our visuals and speech is untethered from real-life social norms, moral agency, consumer protections and some government restrictions, our world begins to resemble Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.