How do people feel about the exclamation point?
Jeb Bush tweets out "Jeb!" logo ahead of 2016 campaign launch http://t.co/hBy1OZvltm pic.twitter.com/RDv2CIj6ZP
— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) June 14, 2015
by DougJ| 80 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016
How do people feel about the exclamation point?
Jeb Bush tweets out "Jeb!" logo ahead of 2016 campaign launch http://t.co/hBy1OZvltm pic.twitter.com/RDv2CIj6ZP
— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) June 14, 2015
Comments are closed.
shell
Jeb!us, Jeb! Will you just announce already.
JPL
It’s the 2016 that bothers me. The Bush family needs to just stay on their compound in Maine.
Halcyan
Akin to Utah! which they wanted to have as their official state name. “We will force the excitement upon you!”
Kay (not the front-pager)
Doesn’t he realize that when Charlie Pierce refers to him as Jeb! he’s being ironic? These guys just don’t get humor, do they.
MattF
The exclamation point is the mark of lexical hegemony of the Bush family over all the ‘lesser’ symbols.
TR
Just like Lamar!
Baud
2016 is going to be the year of bad graphic design, isn’t it?
Gravenstone
He’s missing the ¡
Germy Shoemangler
LOLGOP on twitter has a redesigned Jeb! logo with W’s face for the dot under the exclamation
Germy Shoemangler
Shouldn’t there be a little flame somewhere on that logo?
lgerard
Jeb!
sounds like some dubious carbonated beverage sold at Dollar Stores throughout the south
Major Major Major Major
Speaking as a major major, I can safely say, Jeb! does not strike me as a suffragette.
MattF
@Baud: Tragic Sans, the Font of Regret.
Mary G
They just have a knack for dickishness, the whole family.
RSA
Here’s an interesting critique of campaign logos with views from a professional graphic designer. Apparently Obama started something back in 2008.
feebog
Was supposed to be JEB$, but some stupid intern hit the wrong key.
gogol's wife
@Gravenstone:
LOL!
gogol's wife
It’s such a cliche for titles of musicals that the parody musical this year is Something Rotten!
Elizabelle
@TR: You beat me to it.
Lamar!
And we know how well that turned out.
Ira-NY
Oh, Brother!
Baud
@RSA:
O’Malley’s is as ugly as Hillary’s, but the expert liked it.
lgerard
Have to laugh out loud at someone using his nickname in a run for the presidency.
Puts him in the company of some other memorable politicians such as “Stretch” Lincoln, “Slim” Taft and ‘Skeets” Harding.
Baud
As far as Jeb! goes, Jeb? may have been more accurate.
Amir Khalid
So ¡Jeb! is finally declaring? Took him long enough. I recall a commenter (or maybe it was Betty Cracker) saying the exclamation mark is recycled from a bumper sticker from one of his campaigns for Governor.
AxelFoley
@Baud:
No shit. All the designs we’ve seen so far suck.
cahuenga
Jerb! Creator!
Brachiator
@lgerard: Well, Lincoln is referred to as “the Rail Splitter” and “Honest Abe” on campaign posters and ribbons.
Still, Jeb! reminds me of a bad off Broadway musical.
RSA
@Baud:
Yeah, I don’t get that. Not that I always agree with designers, but both seem pretty bad to me.
ascap_scab
So no one remembers the giant flame-out that was Jack! Ryan?
dmsilev
@ascap_scab: How can we forget that? That gave us Alan Keyes and hence the Crazification Factor. It also brought the phrase ‘Parisian sex club’ into our political discourse.
NCSteve
A big red scream of horror and disgust? Well, at least it’s honest.
MazeDancer
@Baud:
I feel your pain
The Hospital H did look less “turn here” road sign as the shape of a stage than it does on a bumper sticker.
Ken
With respect to the R candidates, I despise Jeb less than most, more than some. But the exclamation mark is OK sloganeering
I mean, it’s no “I like Ike”, but it’s serviceable
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
@Halcyan:
Yep- when you have to explain how exciting you are (ref. Trump, Donald, re: “Look how successful I am!”) its a sign you aren’t.
sharl
@MattF:
Hahahaha, I soooo badly want Tragic Sans to become A Real Thing.
Wait a minute
…{opens separate tab, searched for “Tragic Sans”}
…it apparently is already out there (over 4000 hits). Scroll down a bit here (or do Ctrl-F on tragic; second hit).
Why was I not informed?
I love graphics arts folks, and am rather envious of them as well.
Heliopause
The logo would be more effective if it was a picture of a woman in a bath with Archbishop Makarios looking on.
Omnes Omnibus
Wow, a Wings reference.
Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog
Jeb with a “!” vs. Jeb without a “!” ?
What’s the difference between a schmuck and a putz?
Hungry Joe
@Brachiator: “Jeb!” as a bad off-Broadway musical … man, I’d pay to see it: President W is dominating the first scene — Inauguration Day 2001, maybe — when all freeze, the lights dim, and a spotlight hits Jeb, far stage-right, just watching. Orchestra swells as he begins his first solo, “Forgotten Son.”
I could go on …
Alex S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
The band the Beatles could have been…
Brachiator
@Hungry Joe: And the show stopper, “Don’t Cry For Me, Terry Schiavo…”
WaterGirl
Is that a photo of Jeb at the first link? When I looked at that photo I thought it was a slightly younger Donald Rumsfeld. :: shudder ::
WaterGirl
@Baud: YES! Where are they getting these designers? I’m pretty sure I could do better than what I’ve seen from the candidates so far and I’m not even a graphic designer.
Tree With Water
It would be even more awesome if it read, “Jeb? Yup!”.
NotMax
@lgerard
Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
Keith P.
Shemp!
WaterGirl
@Tree With Water: I was thinking of something more along the lines of:
Jeb? Really?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
You could probably do better as president also.
Cap'n Phealy
Jeb!
I can only remember your brother’s failures
And that time you made them keep poor Terry Schiavo alive
And Jeb, I think you’re trying to make the nation suffer again.
Jeb!…
bg
Same as when he ran for Fla Gov, basically
I wish people would stop insulting Hodor
Minstrel Michael
Back in the early days of the intertubes, when non-alphabetic characters got used for random purposes, those characters got nicknames. The nickname for the exclamation point was “bang.” I wonder if that’s Jeb’s (handlers’) intention.
SiubhanDuinne
I can only hope Jeb! campaigns extensively in Hamilton! Ohio. Maybe he could open Rand McNally’s closed mind.
SiubhanDuinne
@Minstrel Michael:
Jebbang?
NotMax
The obvious thing about the logo is that it omits the word Bush.
On purpose. The campaign recognizes it is a four-letter word, and not in a literal sense.
Willard
Dennis!
Ruckus
The exclamation point just means less ink is wasted than saying moronic asshole.
Debbie
I don’t think the year 2016 can bear the weight of the name! above it.
henqiguai
@Minstrel Michael (#51):
No, I seem to recall the ! = ‘bang’ is Unix-speak; pre-dating the intertubes.
Big ole hound
The ! looks like jeb standing on his head.
Keith G
I just have to point this out from today’s WAPO
I am sorry that the news app I am using does not give access to the url.
El Caganer
For Steve Yuhas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GvjI9ckcUW8
Just One More Canuck
@Keith G: here it is
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rich-californians-youll-have-to-pry-the-hoses-from-our-cold-dead-hands/2015/06/13/fac6f998-0e39-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html?hpid=z4
Tree With Water
“Because if our military leadership thinks we’re on path to degrade and destroy ISIL, they need to be fired.”
Lindsey Graham said that today. It mirrors the philosophy of Cheney-Rumsfeld (et.al.). They would reduce graduates of our military academies to attack dogs, and the senior leadership that emerges from them to political cat-paws of the republican party (the party of war). Those people are are a mortal threat to both our democracy, and our Republican institutions.
Lurking Canadian
@Heliopause: Bush, washing powder, what’s the difference? We can sell anything.
lol
@RSA:
Something that gets only touched on a little is repurposing the logo for different aspects of the campaign. The great thing about the O-bama logo was that you could have variations that were GLBT or Women or Af-Am or Farmers or any sort of demographic and it would still be iconically recognizable as the Obama logo.
The H-illary logo has the same property and none of the other campaigns except for O’Malley have that.
Keith G
@Just One More Canuck: Cool.
I hope ol’ Steve hears from some folks re: his “Some animals are more equal than others” POV.
SiubhanDuinne
@henqiguai:
It actually goes back to the 1950s:
Lurking Canadian
@Tree With Water: I don’t think the US should deploy 10000 troops to Iraq. However, I’m not going to argue that a democratically elected president, constitutionally defined as commander-in-chief of the armed forces doesn’t have the right to fire senior military personnel who disagree with his policies.
It’s not like Graham’s being coy. If he’s elected president, it’ll be because his bellicose posturing has the support of a majority of Americans. It would not then be the generals’ place to tell him where he could and could not attack. They could tell him he was fucking nuts, and he could fire them for it, and it would all be in keeping with democratic tradition.
Tree With Water
@Lurking Canadian: The old Seven Days In May (with a twist) scenario..
Omnes Omnibus
@Lurking Canadian: They could also resign in protest.
Tree With Water
@Omnes Omnibus: No doubt President Adelson would accept their resignations with regret.
rea
@Hungry Joe: man, I’d pay to see it: President W is dominating the first scene — Inauguration Day 2001, maybe — when all freeze, the lights dim, and a spotlight hits Jeb, far stage-right, just watching. Orchestra swells as he begins his first solo, “Forgotten Son.”
Good lyrics, though:
Keith P.
Seems like Jeb is (and was) trying to riff off big brother’s own campaign branding (“W.”…and I *still* see those bumper stickers!) Not really a great way to differentiate oneself from one’s family.
SiubhanDuinne
@Keith P.:
The one I see quite frequently is not a bumper sticker per se but a window decal that says (depending on whether it was installed before or after 2005) “W: The President” or “W: Still the President.”
I also occasionally still see “Palin/McCain” stickers. And yes, the candidates are indeed listed in that order.
This remains a bright red area.
PatrickG
You know, I thought HRC’s logo was absolutely awful. I thought it would hurt her if/when she gets the nomination. But if she goes up against Jeb!, there’s a clear logo advantage.
Have people been giving political graphic designers some sort of new, untested drug?
Villago Delenda Est
Color me totally unimpressed.
John Ellis Bush is dogshit, like the rest of his family.
RAM
@Kay (not the front-pager): I think Charlie ought to sue for trademark infringement.
fuckwit
@SiubhanDuinne: Based on that description, “bright” is not the adjective that first comes to mind.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I know it’s an awfully low bar, but thank you, Baud!
RSA
@lol:
Cool, thanks! That’s an angle I’ve never thought about or heard of before.