O ye of little faith

Nitpick with Google’s Veterans Day logo

Google’s holiday logos, or Google Doodles, are great, and show off the company’s willingness to have a little fun at its own expense—something I think far too many big corporations are afraid to do. It’s an unfortunate fact that the brand consulting industry is partly to blame for this fear of “fun” and creative expression, as documents like visual identity guidelines (although very useful for many companies) can err on the side of restricting too much, preventing in-house creative talent or well-intentioned managers from effectively expressing the company’s personality. Guidelines and charters like these need to walk a fine line between preventing inconsistency and allowing a reasonable, useful amount of flexibility. They should, in fact, enhance the expression of a brand’s personality.

But all this is a topic for another post. All I really wanted to ask was whether anyone else was a bit freaked out by the pointy “horn” of the “e” sticking out from behind the US flag in this Veterans Day logo from Google a month ago:

I feel like Senator McCarthy saying this, but that red shape, peaking out from behind the American flag…it seems reminiscent of another symbol to me…

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Visualizing TV preferences by party affiliation

I’ve seen a few articles now about this Experian Simmons study showing the “highest scoring shows from Experian’s Republican Index and Democrat Index,” but I still haven’t been able to find any information about the methodology behind it.

Methodology aside, what immediately struck me as odd is that the presentation doesn’t make much sense. Why is Desperate Housewives a popular Republican show if it got the same score from both Democrats and Republicans? Why is Damages listed as the #10 most popular Democrat show if it scored lower than Community (#11) among democrats, and scored the same among Republicans? There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the order or even the grouping.

Here’s alternative way to visualize the same data (again, I’m not sure how it was collected). I think it makes more sense than the list above. (Click for larger version.) Here, the shows are listed in order by the difference between their Republican and Democrat scores. Both scores are shown, making it easy to see the differences as well as the relative scores between shows. Here it becomes clear that many of the shows listed are actually “bipartisan,” in that the differences between their scores are negligible compared to the two extremes.

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When is it appropriate for news organizations to edit photographs?

A recent article in The New York Times implies that The Economist was in the wrong when they edited a photo of President Obama for the cover of their June 19th issue. The cover shows the President, apparently alone, looking toward the ground with off-shore oil drills in the distance. The headline is “Obama v BP,” subhead: “The damage beyond the spill.” As the NYT blog article shows, the original Reuters photo included two additional people, who have either been cropped or Photoshopped out of the cover photo.

I remember seeing this cover and thinking Obama looked depressed, ashamed…maybe defeated. Turns out he’s looking downward (probably) so that he can more easily listen to someone much shorter than him. But of course, all of this is open to interpretation. Regardless, it seems to me that reputable news organizations should avoid crossing a line when it comes to edits like these. Seems like that line could be made a bit less blurry by creating a decision tree with three simple questions, like below (click for a larger version)

It’s not fool-proof, of course. In fact, flexibility within limits is one of its benefits. Here are my answers—debatable as they are—for the Economist cover photo in question:

(1) Could the edit fundamentally change the viewer’s perception of what the picture conveys?

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Obama’s award hurts Nobel’s credibility, does little to help Obama’s

Full disclosure: I’m an Obama supporter. I (still) believe in his potential to make a significant, positive impact on the U.S.—the livelihood of its citizens, how it’s perceived globally, and so on. That’s a reason to vote for him; it’s not a reason to give him the Nobel Peace Prize. I’ve heard the opposite argument already a few times today, that “the prize seems to be more for promise than performance,” as it’s stated in an Associated Press story headlined “Analysis: Obama’s Nobel honors promise, not action.”

With all due respect, that’s a pretty ridiculous position to take. Sorry to turn this into a semantic argument (hahaha…ug), but a prize is not usually something awarded for promise. 

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A few beer recommendations for the President

At last Thursday’s sit-down with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. Joseph Crowley, Mr. Obama drank a Bud Light. At first, this seems like an obvious choice—American  legacy, fewer calories than Budweiser (supporting the preventative aspects of his healthcare plan), and fights his image as an arugula-eating snob. But then I remembered that Anheuser-Busch was acquired by InBev, a Belgian company (not traded on U.S. markets), around this time last year. Wouldn’t you think the president would help stimulate our economy a little by drinking a real U.S. beer? Here are some recommendations for next time. Let me know if you have other ideas…

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