Addendum, 6/9/15

I’ve heard from a number of people who hate — haaaaate — Clinton’s logo and think I’m being sarcastic when I say that her branding is “miles […] ahead of the competition.” Take a look at the following Facebook page screen caps for Clinton, my #2 and #3 O’Malley and Rand, and Fiorina, who sports a logo that I’ve been surprised to find many people actually rank highly.

Let’s work from the bottom up. Fiorina’s logo (in addition to being illegible at small sizes) doesn’t have anywhere to go thematically. It’s just that same Gotham Light text, scaled down. The end. I’ve seen a couple of situations where they use the A-with-a-Chinese-star as a logo bug (as a favicon, for instance), but that doesn’t convey anything related to her name.

Rand’s logo is really good. (I’m saying that mostly so a bunch of Rand fans don’t continue to tell me how good it is. I get it…he’s your bro.) But why isn’t the campaign Facebook page using the torch as a profile photo? Why doesn’t it get separated out more on the site? That negative space trick is cute (if a little overplayed these days…like, c’mon) but when you reverse it out and use it on its own, it’s revealed to be simplistic and boring. And again, it does nothing to connect with the candidate’s name.

My biggest objection to O’Malley’s ready-for-MSNBC logo was the lack of carryover onto his website. But look at how well they’ve adapted the concept of the logo to the 1:1 ratio of Facebook’s profile photo. Note that the colors have also changed. Evidence of more than a logo; a design language.

And then Clinton. It would be an oversimplification to consider the arrow-H only as a logo; it’s really more of a framework. No matter the colors it wears, it’s instantly recognizable. Here it’s shown with a photo of the New York skyline; the arrow is called out with opacity instead of color. I’ve seen it draped in the pride flag, which is cool and very effective and I’m sure Rand will be doing a flaaaaaming gay pride version of his logo too any day now. We will continue to see variations on it in the coming months. No other logo in this field is so remarkably adaptable while remaining instantly recognizable. And that is why it’s my top pick.

(And no, your kid couldn’t draw it. You couldn’t draw it in Microsoft Paint. The only people who say stuff like that are those who’ve never worked on logo design or branding.)