The Textures + Type of KC

With a couple of hrs. downtown yesterday I decided to seek out the interesting textures and type that make up KC's urban landscape.

Designing Obama Presentation

I just got done watching the webcast of "Designing Obama," a presentation at the Walker Art Museum in Minnesota. The presentation was made by Sol Sender (pictured above), who spearheaded the development of the Obama '08 logo design, and Scott Thomas, Design Director for the Obama campaign. Sender developed the initial logo as part of his work for Sender, LLC. This included the lowercase Obama. As the campaign evolved Thomas helped with the typography and the uppercase Obama became the new standard.


Gotham was used as a typeface, because it was decidedly American. It was developed for the Port Authority in New York originally. They could have used Helvetica and made Obama look like a generic President, but that obviously would have been Swiss in origin. Plus they knew that a candidate like Obama would only come around once every 100 years or so, and so he needed to stand out. Sender mentioned that they admired the way the Hillary campaign implemented their strategy in terms of getting signs out, but the identity did not take any risks and there was a "don't rock the boat" type of mentality.



When asked about the different grassroots variations of the Obama logo, they mentioned that the "Pirates for Obama" one was their favorite because of the sheer simplicity of flipping the logo and having it work.



Thomas is part of a group of designers called "The Post Family."

Check out their site here

More from the Bottoms

Exploring Downtown

This latest shoot was a fun adventure with Orion and Kelly around downtown Kansas City. Our quest took us to several interesting locations including a scenic point looking out over the Missouri River and a view from underneath the bridges. Then we ventured into the West Bottoms where we found an old diner and an abandoned auto shop. The shop had burned and destroyed the interior, but debris and an old motorcycle were left behind. The eerie feeling of this dark building contrasted with the great sunset around us. To me it felt post-apocalyptic as you were left to imagine the lives of the people that spent each day here.

State of Play

This is a great political thriller. Russell Crowe does a fantastic job portraying Cal McAffrey, an old school reporter at the Washington Globe. Joined by a younger, blog-loving journalist played by Rachel McAdams (from Wedding Crashers), they team up to investigate the mysterious killing of Sonia Baker, a congressional aide to Rep. Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). Jeff Daniels has a solid performance as Rep George Ferguson. There are several plot layers which makes the movie a thought-provoking look at the relationship between politicians, corporations, and journalists.

Scenes from Colorado

Country Sunset

The sky looked pretty cool after the rain passed through on Saturday night. This was out near Linwood.