Obama
Obama's the clear design winner here. His wordmark is set in Perpetua, with elegant symmetry between the O and the 8. It establishes openness, control. The use of Hoefler + Frere-Jones' Gotham throughout all collateral is a nice touch; aside from being quite readable, it serves as a nice counterbalance to the wordmark itself. The site design's HTML is set in Helvetica as the A-list font (as opposed to Arial) to pleasant effect, except when the text dips below 10px, whereupon Arial might render a little better.
One area that I'd perhaps modify would be the my.BarackObama module, ironically enough: it's set in Gill Sans. Gill Sans and Perpetua are often paired, both being the offspring of Eric Gill. However, Gotham Light would've cast the same amount of visual density and be consistent with all the other page elements. I suspect this might be intentional; references to barackobama.com are set in Gill Sans in posters and the like, so it stands to reason that UI elements follow the same pattern.
The O logo is attractive as well; it avoids the cliches of stars and swooshes that have plagued campaigns for the last... oh, let's say, 200 years. The Bank of America logo does come to mind, though.
Clinton
Clinton's "Hillary" logo appears to be using some sort of Garalde variant. Probably Garamond Bold. The choice of 60% of all American assemblymen and city council members. Definitely forgettable.
Huckabee
From first blush, it would appear that Huckabee's pulling a Clinton, just a tad more condensed due to the name length. (Trust me, I know the problem.) Still, the difference in the "a" seems to point to a Sabon-like face. Can't place it quite yet, since it might be faux-condensed as well. There's also a bit of shabby kerning between the "H" and "u", as well as the "b" and "e" - perhaps emphasizing his "common man" persona, unencumbered by fancy typo-whatevers.
On that note, he does love the Trebuchet on his website.
McCain
McCain opts for a sturdy flared humanist serif, not wholly unlike Hermann Zapf's Optima. After experiencing its heydey in the 70s, Optima tends to enjoy niche usage, mostly in university signage and Hal Leonard sheet music books. Optima, coincidentally enough, is used as the primary typeface for Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial. (Before you shout conspiracy, note that Gotham - used in both Obama's and Edwards's campaigns - is the primary typeface for the 9/11 Memorial.)
Aside from the Trajan headlines - which evoke an epic film more than a presidential campaign - the McCain website employs a combination of Futura and Gill Sans. While one would usually opt for one or the other, it's still refreshing to see such restraint coming from the right.
Comments are closed for this post.