This is horrid

Maybe you heard yesterday that Tim Kaine, head of the DNC had a "BIG ANNOUNCEMENT THAT'S SURE TO ENERGIZE DEMOCRATS!!" that he'd let us all in on the next day.  Oooh, the suspense!!  Well, yesterday's tomorrow is today, so here's the Big Announcement...  Yeah...  A new logo...  A crappy one, at that.  Silly me, I thought ol' Timbo had a real September surprise to pull out of his posterior - something that may have electoral consequences.  Bzzzzt!  Wrong answer, Sparky!

Seriously.  Yikes.  As a signs & engraving guy, I work with logos every single day.  There is a lot of psychology that goes into an effective logo.  Most people don't realize it, so I'll walk ya through my thoughts...

This logo is pure, concentrated fail.  To start with, I don't like the pastel blue.  It is gimpy.  But worse than that, it neither matches nor contrasts much with the other shade of blue.  To a realtor it's always "location, location, location" but to a sign guy it's always "contrast, contrast, contrast."  Then we have the circle.  Bad, bad, bad.  If you want to talk about "change" then don't BUILD A FREAKIN' FENCE around your identity.  This is the opposite of "outside the box."  Closed borders around an image sometimes work - like for a security company or an investment advisor.  A closed border implies rigidity and constraints and risk aversion.  Not change. 

The blue "democrats" copy is, well, meh.  It isn't horrid but again, the shade of blue is too pale.  This is the kind of color one would use for packaging something like baby wipes or denture adhesive.  Non-threatening.  It is not the color that says "change."  I don't immediately recognize the typestyle.  The splayed M and the low crossbar on the A give me a tiny bit of an Art Deco vibe even though it isn't really Art Deco.  Hmmm.  I'm not really into slabserif typefaces, but for some reason I don't mind this one too much.  Except that it conveys a sense of "old" to me. 

Then at the bottom is the little red blurb in the Gotham typeface used during barry's campaign.  Gotham was used on stuff like gas station signs during the Route 66 era.  Again, to me it says more "nostalgia" than "change."  Gotham wasn't widely used lately until barry's campaign started using it and now it is EVERYWHERE.  To me it says "follower" a lot more than "leader" when I see Gotham being used.  Ugh.

I have to hope that this logo was made by a conservative artist who was intentionally trying to destroy the democrat brand.  Nothing else makes sense...