At a speech to graphic designers last week, I cited the October 9 NYT op-ed by Scott Dadich on "the visual messages of the two candidates" to demonstrate how aesthetic elements take on meanings through association--and how those meanings can vary from person to person. Dadich, the creative director of Texas Monthly and a self-described Democrat, writes that the Bush-Cheney logo is:
brash and snazzy: a field of powerful, militaristic navy blue punctuated with the four letters of his surname spelled out in white in what appears to be Folio Extra-Bold Italic letters. (Even the name of the font sounds forceful, doesn't it?)
The effect is striking, simple and progressive. The rightward lilt of the wide, capital letters reinforces Mr. Bush's ideology while at the same time portraying a buoyant sense of forward movement, energy and positive change. The type is strong without being oppressive, nimble without being fanciful - a successful construction reminiscent of the 1992 Clinton-Gore logo. Add a simplification of the American flag - 20 stars and seven stripes - and a supportive "Cheney" in a smaller font underneath, and you've got a strong visual hierarchy that reinforces the candidate's spoken message that he is a firm and resolute leader....
A typical Kerry logo displays the same inconsistency that his opponents accuse him of. A steady visual message requires the consistent use of the same font over and over again. On a typical drive to work, I encounter no fewer than five typefaces used in as many different Kerry-Edwards logos. One is stretched out; another is condensed. One looks masculine; one looks feminine. In contrast to Mr. Bush's aggressive sans-serif font, Senator John Kerry's multitudinous font choices center on the use of thin, delicate-looking, "girlie-man" type. No wonder some voters think he's a vacillating wimp.
In letters to the editor, some readers disagreed. John Thomas, an associate professor of graphic design at Northeastern University, wrote:
Serif types are the original typographic forms of the Roman alphabet. Sans-serif types are derivative letter forms that have been stripped of their serifs (as the name implies, if you know a little French!), a simplification that lends itself to short, simple messages.
Sans-serif type is the medium of corporate graphics and sound bites; it is associated with selling and spin. Serif type is the medium of books, editorial and content; it is associated with learning and knowledge.
When looking at the Kerry logo, you do get what you see, but some see intelligence, wisdom and integrity.
And Kevin Salatino, curator of prints and drawings, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, commented (so vociferously that I at first thought his letter was a parody):
As a curator of prints and drawings, I know a thing or two about meaning in graphic design. The fat, crowded, sans-serif capitals of the Bush-Cheney logo connote lethargy, rigidity and intolerance, and their partisan rightward tilt is stopped in its tracks by a poorly designed flag that looks like a trio of speed bumps.
The typography of the Kerry-Edwards logo draws upon a rich history, from imperial Rome to the classical revival of the Renaissance.
If you question its weight and authority, just look at the lettering on most bank buildings.
It connotes dignity and rectitude, and its refusal to slant right or left suggests inclusiveness and centrism, as do the 50 stars on John Kerry's handsome flag.
Even experts disagree. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder. And regular voters may not see what the experts see at all. Reader David Noziglia emails this question:
Why do the campaign posters for the two candidates look so much alike? Now, I'm no Scott Dadich, to look at the details of shade and font (and to spin the result for my candidate). All I can see is a blue background, the candidates' names in white, the American flag attatched to the names, and a red stripe on the bottom with, respectively, Kerry's slogan and Bush's url. The arcane details that Dadich treats with such importance aren't nearly as striking to me as the sameness of the basic design. What is this? Have the campaigns gone to the same design houses, who went to the same focus groups, who decided that this is the One Best Way?
In this reading, the logos graphically express what political scientists call "median voter theory." In a two-party system like ours--mathematically, the constitutional arrangement leads to two parties, no matter how much alternatives squawk--candidates will crowd the middle, the better to attract as many votes as possible. When designing a logo to attract 50 percent plus one, the most important thing is not to alienate people, and you can't go wrong with red, white, and blue. (Jimmy Carter's unusual excursion into green, like Jimmy Carter's presidency itself, just demonstrates how odd post-Watergate politics was.) But, of course, candidates also need to hold their bases; hence, the typographical and rhetorical signals that only the especially attuned pick up. And the electoral college adds a wrinkle to the median voter theory of design. What you really need to know is what kind of typeface they like in Ohio.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 18, 2004 • Comments
After a four-year hiatus, to write The Substance of Style and weather the ad recession, I've returned as a semi-regular columnist in Forbes. My first column looks at how "reasonable accommodations" for learning disabilities become unreasonable in the context of professional school admissions:
Over the past decade students with learning disabilities have gotten used to having extra time on tests and, in some cases, separate rooms to reduce distraction. In many cases that makes sense. Giving a dyslexic third grader extra time on a standardized test makes it more likely that his answers will show what he knows rather than how fast he reads.
But a sensible accommodation for little kids can create a misleading double standard for adults. How much you know isn't the only thing that matters in school--especially when you're training for a demanding professional job. What patient wants a genius doctor who can't focus in a distracting environment, reads so slowly that she can't keep up with medical journals or tends to misspell drug names on prescriptions?
Yes, learning disabilities exist and, no, they don't affect how "smart" someone is. But they can definitely hurt one's ability to work effectively. If you missed Lisa Belkin's terrific NYT Magazine feature on the problems of adults with ADHD, be sure to read it here (no registration required). Her profiles evoke sympathy for adults whose racing minds make it extremely difficult for them to get their jobs done. But the rest of the workforce, and the customers it serves, also deserve sympathy. The relevant question is not why you can or cannot do a job but whether you can.
I'm constantly struck by the glib double standard we apply to these cases. If you're "smart" but can't concentrate, you deserve sympathy and accommodation. If you're "dumb" (or even average) and can concentrate, you don't. Yet intelligence is no more deserved than any other genetic quality. If you're smart, you're just lucky. But if you're smart and making policy, you tend to think that intelligence is a virtue that outweighs other factors.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 18, 2004 • Comments
I can't top Marginal Revolution's multipost coverage of why Edward Prescott and Finn Kydland deserve their Nobel prize in economics. But I can plug my May 2001 NYT column on Prescott's path-breaking book with Stephen Parente, Barriers to Riches. An excerpt:
Open international trade has indirect advantages as well. By increasing competition, it spurs producers to find ways to reduce costs and, hence, prices to consumers--again, increasing living standards. And it spreads knowledge and skill. People all over the world gain access to the best technologies and most productive business practices.
Unless they're forbidden to adopt them.
Such prohibitions explain why poor countries stay poor, two economists, Stephen L. Parente of the University of Illinois and Edward C. Prescott of the University of Minnesota, argue in "Barriers to Riches," published last year by MIT Press. "Although countries have access to the same stock of knowledge," they write, "they do not all make equally efficient use of this knowledge because policies in some countries lead to barriers that effectively prevent firms from adopting more productive technologies and from changing to more efficient work practices."...
If savings and education were enough, says Professor Prescott, "Khrushchev would have been right."
"The former Soviet Union would have buried the West. They were well educated. They had high savings rates. The efficiency with which you use resources matters."
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 13, 2004 • Comments
In a blog posting about his new Serenity movie, Buffy creator Joss Whedon writes:
But no matter how much I suffer for my art, it's worth it. 'Cause come April 22nd I think we'll be bringing you an exciting film that's a powerful statement about the right to be free. Which is not as cool as my original statement about the right to tasty garlic mussels in a cilantro broth, but the freedom thing's okay too.
It's a joke, of course, but a particularly apt one: the right to eat disgusting food like garlic mussels in a cilantro broth is a sign of freedom--and so is the right to say Joss's favorite spice tastes horrible. (He ended the post with "Cilantro!") One of the great powers of markets is allowing different tastes to coexist. Here's a related paragraph from the afterword (a.k.a. "About the Book") of the paperback edition of The Substance of Style:
Aesthetics isn't like mathematics or physics. It's like food. Food critics can talk meaningfully about better or worse cuisine. Chefs can analyze recipes to figure out why certain combinations of ingredients produce certain effects. But no amount of analysis and argument will make me like cilantro or the first President Bush like broccoli. Those are personal, subjective judgments. Even critics must ultimately base their culinary assessments on experience, not first principles. The diner, not the cook, is the ultimate arbiter of what works.
Thanks to Todd Seavey for the Whedon quote.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 13, 2004 • Comments
I was dreading tonight's debate as yet another 90-minute exchange of talking points, but it actually had some substance--in part because George W. Bush is a whole lot wonkier when he's talking about domestic issues than foreign policy. The contrast between Bush's dynamic analysis of the health care system and the static assumptions of John Kerry's plan was particularly striking. (Then, of course, Bush blew it by bragging about the prescription drug benefit.)
Kerry made a substantive point about the inescapable transition costs of moving to private retirement accounts while covering current obligations. But he made it in a confusing way, presumably because he was working harder to scare oldsters than to ellucidate the issue.
Bush's response on immigration was gutsy and seemed heart-felt, even though all he did was reiterate his established position. Kerry dodged the issue.
You might think the president used to be a governor. (The debate transcript is here.
Assorted gratuitous comments:
Was every Catholic male an altar boy?
How many times does Kerry spend that tax hike on the rich?
Will there be any backlash at Bush for saying that atheists are as American as Christians, Jews, and Muslims? Even Kerry only went so far as to include Native American religions among the respectable ways of worshipping--perhaps because there are a lot of Indians in New Mexico. And speaking of Indians, what about the Hindus and Buddhists?
How upset was Bush at missing the baseball games?
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 13, 2004 • Comments
Today's NYT "T" Style Magazine includes an short excerpt from the essay I wrote for SFMOMA's "Glamour" exhibit catalogue (a.k.a. coffee-table book) Glamour: Fashion, Industrial Design, Architecture. I'm on my way home from San Francisco, where I joined the other essayists for speeches and a panel discussion yesterday.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 10, 2004 • Comments
My latest NYT column examines how Texas's experiment in school-finance equalization went horribly awry:
Public policy experiments rarely produce complete successes or total failures. They usually leave room for people with different goals or values to keep arguing.
Occasionally, however, there's a policy disaster so catastrophic that everyone agrees that something has to change. California's convoluted attempt to deregulate electricity was one example. Texas's decade-long experiment in school finance equalization - universally referred to as Robin Hood - is another.
"In less than a decade, the system is approaching collapse; it has exhausted its own capacity," write Caroline M. Hoxby and Ilyana Kuziemko, economists at Harvard, in a new working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research. "We show that the collapse was predictable." (The paper, "Robin Hood and His Not-So-Merry Plan: Capitalization and the Self-Destruction of Texas' School Finance Equalization Plan," is available at http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers.html.)
As school budgets fall and property taxes rise, Texans know Robin Hood is in trouble. But most do not really understand why.
Some blame the very idea of equalization, others say schools are too dependent on property taxes, and still others argue that taxes are too low. Some declare that schooling has simply become more demanding and expensive.
"Although it is a financially efficient model, the current system, as it is now designed, cannot live up to the standards of our 'outcomes'-based accountability system," Lloyd Jenkins, a school district trustee in the Dallas suburb of Plano, recently wrote in The Dallas Morning News.
In fact, argue the economists, the Robin Hood system is anything but financially efficient. Robin Hood does not just move money from rich school districts to poor school districts. It does so in a way that destroys far more wealth than it transfers, and that erodes the tax base on which school funding depends.
Although Robin Hood's problems get plenty of media coverage in Dallas, I never understood either the system or why it's inherently self-destructive until I read the Hoxby-Kuziemko paper. While the Texas system is particularly stark, many other states are considering similar systems. They should learn from our state's mistakes.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 06, 2004 • Comments
I've been overwhelmed with deadlines, family fun--my mother is visiting on her way to her 50th high school reunio in Little Rock--and family-fun deadlines (teaching my mom PowerPoint and helping her create a presentation to give at said reunion). I haven't even watched the Tivo'd vice presidential debate, so I have no comment.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 06, 2004 • Comments
I agree with Kausfiles on the debate.
Concentrating more on substance than style, Tom Curry of MSNBC is also on target. In this case, Kerry doesn't come off as well.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on October 01, 2004 • Comments