You need to go to the site to see the comparison.
A blog on design issues (among other things), the View from 32, has a neat interactive image that shows the campaign website for Les Otten, a Republican already campaigning for the governorship in Maine (election next year), compared to the website for Barack Obama. You’ll notice more than a few similarities, including the “O” logo.
You don’t think . . . no Republican would copy . . . their politics must be completely different . . .
What the heck? Obama won, right? Who can argue with success?
You gotta see it to believe it.
From Fred2Blue
CLASSIC LES OTTEN STORY
http://thetruthpost.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/les-otten-hits-the-big-apple-employee/
I hope you’ll click through to the original blog with those thoughts, Bob.
And it’s the same story you will hear from graphic designers: It’s impossible not to copy someone else’s work, unknowingly or deliberately – you’re always going to repeat – reuse – or appropriate.
If I had the time (or interest) I could find work that Obama’s team copied or appropriated. I have NO doubt that the Obama logo was deliberately lifted from the USDA. Beall’s work in the Rural Electrification Administration is universally taught in graphic design courses. The USDA traces its lineage back to that those iconic images.
The design Otten uses is common, (it’s included in the templates in Dreamweaver) the color scheme intuitive, and font selection basic graphic design 101. That the blogger is himself a graphic designer, he is making a mountain out of a anthill.
Now if you could get the originals – the underlying code and see that they copied the CSS or other integral components, I’d say there’s smoke and maybe fire. Otherwise, it nada times nada. I will say this – the code they do have up is remarkably clean, and that usually indicates original work.
But, Bob, go read the commentary at the View from 32, and look a the websites — layout, colors, typefaces . . . what do you think?
Aren’t both just riffs on the USDA family of logos? It is very difficult to come up with a brand that is wholly unique. Even the famous Fairey imagery is just a play on Warhol’s work, which itself was interpretation of medieval manuscript illumination.