Romney’s logo is bad, very bad. Ask any of your designer friends. It looks like it is homemade and from the 1970s. It is amazing this is being used in a presidential race. His marketing pros are dying to, I guarantee you, junk this thing. But, he seems to have been using the logo for all his political campaigns which is a “tell” that he is the one making the decision to use this terrible logo and is a “tell” that he is very, very involved in the marketing decisions for his campaign (and potentially vastly overestimates his talents in this area and does not listen to his advisors). So, does this logo indicate that Romney is – I hope – a deluded, micromanaging candidate?
OK so here is the logo.
I am not a designer but I work with designers and think about logos a lot as a long time marketing executive. Logos have gotten generally better these days because of the explosion of design software and design. It is hard, literally, if you have money, to make something that looks terrible (if you hire any decent designer and listen to them). It could be flat or not strategic or boring but it should at least not terrible. Romney’s logo is not well designed or strategic.
I’d be curious what the graphic designers on the site think (and would defer to their more informed analysis) but my take is that the logo is not well defined, is a strange wedge shape, and communicates “old” rather than new. It is also used strangely. It seems to just be a badly designed, oversized R that they are then forced to use as a logo elsewhere in very awkward ways the way they use it at the top of his page surrounded by a big black box.
So, I got curious as to how this crap logo got used in a major presidential campaign. Look at Obama’s logo. It is fantastic. I know some of the people who – peripherally – helped with versions of this logo and have also read about its evolution. Basically, Obama had medicore logo(s) earlier in his political career but hired good designers and listened to them and ended up with a great logo (he also didn’t like the whole “hopey” thing but in the end listened to and benefitted from the marketers who knew better).
Romney never took this step forward.
Look at the famous fake “Rmoney” photo that was taken from his senatorial (or gubnatorial?) campaign. There it is…. They flipped the kids but the logo is what they used back then.
My guess is that a family member or friend made this logo for him when he got started and he just sticks with it. If I worked for him (god forbid), I would tell him in the interview that he needs to get rid of that logo. This stuff matters (people respond emotionally to good and bad design). So, I would guess that he’s had many people tell him to change the logo, make strong cases to change the logo (including running focus groups to get the likely negative reactions to it), but he has refused either because he has an emotional attachment to it or because he likes it and believes, because he is always right about everything, he is right about the logo and the marketing executives and “people” are wrong.
Like every marketing guy, I’m continually fighting with people who make the basic mistake that because they like something, EVERYONE likes it. It is a basic mistake because in marketing you are supposed to get out of your own head (and into other people’s heads) so you can sell them stuff/ideas. Amazingly, CEOs who depend on marketing often fall into this trap (it is a hard trap for some people to overcome). They are deluded and believe their taste is everyone’s taste.
So, based on this logo, I smell a deluded, micromanaging executive. It makes me hope that more mistakes are to come!
Really curious about other design, marketing, ad people’s take on this thing…
7:10 AM PT: Distraught rightly points out I got snookered by fake "Rmoney" photo. The kids were photoshopped.. Too bad that's not real... But, the crap logo was there in the original photo that was altered (they should have fixed that too :)).
7:18 AM PT: and, meant to say, per above, I corrected Rmoney photo reference.