Convinced that “systematic branding efforts” have much to do with Barack Obama’s appeal to voters, Newsweek’s Andrew Ramano called on veteran graphic designer Michael Bierut to examine some of the key branding and design elements that set Obama apart from the competition.

He’s the first candidate, actually, who’s had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it’s more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker symbol that they just stick on everything and hope that that will carry the day.

The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface, which is this typeface called Gotham. [See "Change We Can Believe In" sign, above] If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every single one of them. And they’re all perfectly spaced and perfectly arranged. Trust me. I’ve done graphics for events –and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, “Oh, we ran out of signs, let’s do a batch in Arial.” It just doesn’t seem to happen. There’s an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients.

Then if you go to the Web site, it’s all reflected there too–all the same elements showing up in this clean, smooth, elegant way. It all ties together really, really beautifully as a system.

[Ad Age via Newsweek]

Bierut also compares the Obama logo to the Nike swoosh:

A lot of times when he’s at a podium what you’ll see is, centered right beneath him, at the very top of the blue field that usually says something like “Change You Can Believe In,” it’ll be just that little symbol, functioning in the same way the Nike swoosh does. People look at that and know what it means, even though it’s just an “O” with some stripes in it.