The Iraq War, Health Care, Tax Reform, Social Security, Terrorism, Global Warming. All issues to debated until the elections determine who wins the 2008 Presidential Election, for sure. But none of those topics come into play in this forum. What matters here is the design of the political campaign logos — these identities are as varied as the candidates themselves.

In my opinion, the logo that stands out initially is John McCain’s. It’s black, his name is featured prominently and the swash of yellow sits nicely afoot the only logo with an identifiable element — the military star. There’s no doubt the star represents his military service and compared with the generic stars and stripes found in the other marks, this element is very distinguishing. If you didn’t know anything about any of these candidates prior to seeing these marks you could deduce that McCain had served his country.

Another element that caught me was the green swoosh in John Edward’s logotype. His website uses this color as an accent, and given the ‘green’ world that we live in these days I’m surprised no one else has utilized it. The direction of his swoosh is important in that it’s a rising star, not one that’s falling. Conversely, Mitt Romney’s swoosh looks like it has morphed into a wingless bird that has been injured and is fighting for survival. The US Postal Service’s bird would eat this one for lunch.

The most egregious design element has to be Bill Richardson’s fractured star. Bisecting this shape in an American political arena really seems to be shortsighted. I hope they don’t drag Old Glory through the dirt at any of Bill’s rallies.

Jim Gilmore. Duncan Hunter. This is an apostrophe. Learn it. Use it correctly. Try again.

The Barack Obama logo is the most progressive and elegant one of the group. The concept and execution found within this logo are years ahead of the others — maybe even 4 years ahead! In his logo, I immediately see concepts: hope (a sun seems to be rising in the center of the “O”); unity (the circle forms a nice communal element); and progress (the left-to-right moving stripes represent the flag but also form the “land” when combined with the aforementioned “sun”.) The light blue found on either side of his name really ties this one together nicely. And in the year 2007, how did none of the other logos include the website address, like this one managed to do? Amazing!

Hillary Clinton’s seems to be safe and looks “Presidential”. Joe Biden’s is nice, but mostly forgettable. Rudy Guilani’s is alright, but I think I would have liked to see an “08″ next to it for context, otherwise it comes across as an element better suited for his autobiography. (John McCain would have benefited from this approach, too.) Chris Dodd’s? I look right past that mark every time. Go ahead, try to study it for 5 seconds — you can’t!