July 25, 2008

Compare and Contrast: McCain Has His Own Awesome Poster

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mojo-photo-mccainpostersm.jpgWe here in the media elite sure like our liberal posters, since they reference things we studied in school and that makes us feel smart. But in the interest of equal time, let’s take a look at some design work from the other side: via Marc Ambinder’s blog at TheAtlantic.com, it’s a John McCain campaign poster (right). Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. First of all, I’d say that my mom might have designed this on her rickety old PC, since it appears to use some sort of free PosterMaker software with Plug-In Faux Marble Borders, but the last 7 years have turned even my central Nebraska parents into screaming liberals, so I doubt she’d stoop so low. In the center, we have, well, The Ghost of John McCain, and this should be a lesson to graphic designers: go easy on the see-through filters on the over-70 set. What is cool is that apparently airplanes can fly out of McCain’s head. He just thinks, “I’d like to launch some jets,” and kafwoop, there they go, from his brain. Now, “Peace is Born of Wisdom” looks like a slogan from one of those Latter-Day Saints TV ads, a demographic that I understand he wants to appeal to, but then why abandon this classic look for a nonsensical reddish-white-and-blue banner featuring a generic “McCain 08” in a totally different sans-serif font? Argh! It’s not even good at being bad!!! After the jump, see a larger-size version of the poster, and my theory about how the designer came up with it.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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