Super Marketing

Sol Sender on the big "O"

by Holly Otterbein

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Like any good piece of art, Prez-elect Barack Obama's campaign logo inspires many interpretations.

At first, the ubiquitous "O," with its iridescent blue top and curved red-and-white stripes, seems simple enough. It's a disjointed flag with a rising sun at its center, intended to invoke both patriotism and renewal. But others have seen more in it, including the American farmland, a symbol of bipartisanship and even the Egyptian god Osiris.

The president of Sender LLC, the Chicago design firm that created Obama's logo, thinks it's much simpler than all that.

"We have always seen it as a sun rising on a new day for American politics," says Sol Sender. "There was no religious intention, Egyptian or otherwise."

Sender — who'll be speaking at Moore College of Art & Design tonight about his now-famous logo — landed the job through a connection with David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. From a single office in an industrial brick building, his six-person design team developed the symbol after reading two of Obama's books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope. Inspired by his ideas of national unity, hope and change, they wanted to create a design that embodied this message. 

To do so, Sender and his team embraced a bit of change themselves and refused to adhere to the traditional, boxy paradigm for campaign logos. Instead, they "followed the rules of consumer brand strategy." Straying from the political norm wasn't too difficult — the firm had never designed for a politician before and had previously worked with entertainment, real estate and financial companies.

'"I actually think that [our inexperience with political campaigns] was an advantage," says Sender. "In general, campaign graphics have been quite boring, typeface-based and have historically contained very little creativity."

It's hard to argue with him. The logos for this year's other presidential candidates looked anachronistic, as if party leaders crafted them in the '80s and had recycled them every election since to cut costs. Not to mention that many were eerily similar. Those for former governor Mitt Romney, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain were all rectangular — a shape that translates poorly to buttons and T-shirts.

Conversely, the "O" was easily adaptable. When the Obama campaign wanted to tailor the logo to women, they added the Venus symbol to the bottom. When they were targeting environmentalists, they changed its red and white stripes to green fields.

But Obama's campaign logo didn't break every convention. "It still spoke the political language. It was red and blue; it had stripes," says Sender. "It was the right balance of innovation and tradition. We thought that was quite important."

If his hometown is lucky, this won't be the last time Sender's graphics are tied up with the nation's history: VSA Partners is branding the 2016 Chicago Olympics bid.

Designing Obama's Brand with Sol Sender | Thu., Nov. 20, 6 p.m. reception, 7 p.m. lecture, $30, Moore College of Art & Design, 20th Street and the Parkway, 215-965-4000, philadelphia.aiga.org