Campaign Sign Snark 2010: Mark Anderson

By Jenn

For many voters, their first and most visceral exposure to a candidate is via the campaign signs posted on street corners and abandoned lots. These signs are the face of a campaign, and are responsible for generating a voter's first impression of a candidate. Campaign Sign Snark is an ongoing feature that will comment exclusively on these signs from a purely design and aesthetic standpoint, uninfluenced by the candidate's politics, platform, and personality.

If you would like to see a sign featured in Campaign Sign Snark, email a picture to jenn@reappropriate.com.

Submitted by reader M.W., seen at Dobson & Southern in Mesa.

Aesthetics: Wow. Well, what can I say about the aesthetics? John Trumbull's painting of the Founding Fathers presenting the Declaration of Independence to Congress is so famous that Googling "founding fathers AND signing declaration of independence" returns several pages of results duplicating this image. And, it really is a beautiful painting — but what the heck is it doing on a campaign sign?

Oil paintings — of the kind reproduced here — are meant to be appreciated up-close and under the right lighting. It cannot be appreciated at sunset, inside a speeding car moving at 45 miles per hour, from more than twenty feet away, while the viewer is also trying to drive and pat away the spilled coffee from his brand new khaki pants. In fact, I suspect that at dusk, this painting looks like a dark, indistinct smear punctuated with ghostly powdered wigs.

Also — graphic design nerd alert – Trumbull's painting actually places the right-side of the painting in shadow and the left-side in light; our eyes tend to gravitate towards the brightest point of an image. Only with some consideration of the painting does our eye follow the plane of view along that row of gentlemen towards the Founding Fathers presenting their draft of the Declaration. Which means that when driving at breakneck speed past the painting, the focal point of the image is actually the gentlemen on the left, and not the Founding Fathers, which leaves us feeling a little bit like a vote for Mark Anderson is akin to sitting in Congress, waiting for something exciting to happen.

And how about that teal box in the lower left-hand corner, with its teeny-tiny overkill American flag? Here's a rule of thumb — when modifying a graphic, it's helpful to use a colour from the image. Think of it this way: dressing in certain colours can sometimes be said to bring out the colour of one's eyes. It's the same principle here: pick colours that complement the image. Don't haphazardly add whatever colour you feel like (just because it's your campaign colour) and ignore the fact that you're creating a visual clash. Either pick a different campaign colour or, better yet, don't reproduce an oil painting on your campaign signs! 

Effectiveness: I'll give Anderson credit for the type on the top of the image, because it is both legible and understandable despite its flamboyant rejection of basic grammar and punctuation. The tagline meshes with the overall message of the campaign sign: a vote for Mark Anderson is somehow also a vote for the Founding Fathers. And who hates the Founding Fathers, right? Certainly not John Huppenthal.

But then, we look down at the bottom of the sign, and you've got that teeny-tiny "Justice of the Peace" text in the hideous teal box (yeah, you can't read it in the image above – that's kind of my point). Okay, I can barely read that text, and I'm looking at it in a high-resolution picture taken by a gracious reader standing not ten feet from the sign. How is anyone driving along the road supposed to be able to?

People, if your font is too small, do not waste space and printer ink even putting that crap on your sign!

Rating: 0 out of 5 for shamelessness in appropriating and desecrating Trumbull's iconic image, but 5 out of 5 for the sheer randomness — and I-don't-give-a-damn-about-basic-logic ballsyness – it takes to run a campaign for Justice of the Peace by referencing the Founding Fathers and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

The Voters' Take-Home Message: "I'm so Conservative I'm actually trying to go back in time! I want to return America to the idyllic bygone era of powdered wigs, knee-high socks, and slave-owning. We may not have had electricity or indoor plumbing, but at least back then these gosh-darned minorities knew their place and we defended our freedoms with the business end of a musket! Vote for me!!"