Jeb! is fine, as far as logos go. It's uninspired, sure, but it gets the job done. But as a piece of typography, it's crap.

Actually, it's worse than that.

“It’s a piece of shit, and you can quote me on that,” says design critic Steven Heller, who has written dozens of books on everything from branding and typography to infographics and posters. He is hardly alone in being so critical, though famed typographer Chester Jenkins was a bit more gentle about it. “The logo isn't bad as a graphic, but as a piece of typography, there are some problems,” he says.

Bush, the third member of the Republican political dynasty to aspire to the White House, revealed his Baskerville logo on Twitter Sunday. Much has been said about the font, and the colors, and what exactly it all means, and doesn't mean, about the man who would be president. And the bottom line is, according to some prominent graphic designers and critics, it has more than a few problems.

First among them is the letters, which is pretty big when you consider that's essentially all the logo is: Jeb! in Baskerville. There’s no typical (stereotypical?) American iconography—the stars and stripes, an eagle, something—to guide the eye away from the four bright red letters in a font Jenkins describes as “a not very pleasant weight" of the type cut in the 20th century. It's just so … ordinary. The guy who designed Jeb! used an off-the-shelf font. The result is a logo that could have been created by any kid with a Mac. Now, it's being used as a man who wants to become our president.

It’s a piece of shit, and you can quote me on that. Steven Heller, design critic

Beyond that, it's not at all original. Bush has been using some variation of the Jeb! logo since 1994, when he made an unsuccessful run for governor of Florida. We found a perfect time capsule of a photo showing Jeb alongside his beaming father, George H.W. Bush, who sports a white baseball cap emblazoned with “Jeb!” in Benguiat, a font Ed Benguiat designed in 1978 (the same font used in the opening titles of Star Trek Generations).

The Bush team scores points for updating the font, but loses points for doing it so poorly. Jenkins says more space between the "J" and "E" would have created more balance. And the exclamation mark is out of proportion to the rest of the lettering. “It's not entirely clear if the '!' has been scaled a specific amount, as its dimensions don't relate to anything else in the logo," he says. "The bottom of the curves of the "J" and "!"—the overshoot—almost align. But not quite. It confuses the eye.”

Oh, and that 2016 underneath? While not the most offensive part of the logo, it could stand to be a little higher and to the right. Plus, says typographer Tobias Frere-Jones, the year is "set in a sans that is too mechanical to harmonize with the main letterforms and too feeble to make a deliberate contrast."

All things considered, the logo is more akin to a clip-on than a neatly knotted presidential tie. As graphic designer David Carson puts it: “It’s what I would expect if Jed! Clampett were running for mayor of Beverly Hills. This logo suggests nothing new, exciting or progressive, nor serious or highly educated. Good ole boy comes to mind; also SALE TODAY, painted on the side of a building.”

Renowned typographer Jonathan Hoefler is similarly unimpressed: "It doesn't have any of the professional polish of Hillary's logo, though I can't help but wonder if it's an attempt to make her slick."

Pretty harsh, but all is fair in love, war, and politics. Remember the uproar surrounding Hillary Clinton’s logo?

Mike Murphy, a political strategist who’s worked with the Bush family in the past and has been credited with slapping the exclamation point at the end of “Jeb,” came to its defense. “Why Jeb! Logo works well: clean, easy to see from far away, upbeat, and most of all; Consistent,” he tweeted.

Murphy might be biased, but even a few graphic designers have admitted that it checks enough boxes to be considered successful, visually speaking. “It’s strong, it’s bold, it’s short, it reduces well,” says Sagi Haviv, a graphic designer and partner at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv in New York, before adding a gripe of his own: The logo, with its glaring exclamation mark, is annoyingly bossy. “I’ll decide if I get excited,” Haviv says. “Don’t tell me to get excited.”