Thursday, 18 September 2014

The design of independence (or not)

Today Scotland was voting on whether we should be independent from the UK.

One thing I have found interesting about this debate is the design aspect - of course!
The comments below are totally politically objective - they're about design and nothing to do with how I voted :-)

'Yes' is an easy message to design for - the word is inherently positive; you just need to say it with no frills. Here's their logo:

BaNqe9Qr_400x400.png

The other side had a definite disadvantage from that point of view - 'no' is an inherently negative word (of course, if the question had been 'should Scotland remain in the UK?' it would have been the other side dealing with this problem). The slogan they started with (and have kept for some things) was 'Better Together'.
Better_Together_logo.jpg
Positive, but hardly competes for snappiness with a large 3-letter word. Not ideal for window stickers, and also, importantly, doesn't explicitly tell people what to vote.

So, they changed their logo and slogan to this one:

no thanks.png
I really like this solution: The addition of the word 'thanks' makes it polite and friendly. The cross shows you that you've to vote 'no', and, when reversed out of blue, it looks like a Scottish flag:
_75425405_75425404.jpg
Not sure if that was deliberate, as they often don't reverse it, or use other colours. But I think it's a good way to emphasise that voting against independence is not being unpatriotic.


And on that note, here's another one I liked:

Naw.jpeg
It parodies the 'Yes' logo, and it is both Scottish and, importantly in this debate, working class.

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