Michele Bachmann - Designing A Candidacy

The marketing of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign is built around her own persona. Her headshot is featured prominently in her website banner and in every facet of her media offerings, just as her name is festooned across her midnight blue campaign bus.

Source: Bachmann For President

Overall, Bachmann offers one of the best presentations in this year’s Republican crop. Her pieces of messaging all connect to the same leitmotif, to an unmistakable values-centered image of yesteryear. Her distinctive seal features the classic Americana emblem of corner stars with a bordered last name. While seemingly unremarkable, the logo’s thin lettering etched vividly on a white background serves to elevate Bachmann’s status in subtle ways. The elements create a convincing dressing of establishment for a three-term Representative. The logo conjures heartland memories and suggests permanence for a politician relatively new to the national scene. Her design looks like it should be painted on the side of a barn, sentimentally appealing to Iowa caucus goers. Her crest is at once nostalgic and reminiscent of lettering on a quadrangle’s gazebo, above a marching band’s scalloped bunting.

The “H” in her name is emphasized, in a nice, uplifting banner wave, but the branding oddly singles out a middle letter rather than a marquee initial. Still, Jon Huntsman would have been better served to mimic Bachmann’s optimistic and distinctive “H,” rather than his disjointed Tribeca block lettering.

Bachmann succeeds where others falter, because her campaign understands the message it seeks to convey and, therefore, uses its visual components to reinforce these subtle communiqués. A design should be inseparable from a candidate’s persona. In this regard, Bachmann is ahead of the pack.

Check out our other posts about design and education in the 2012 election.