Introducing Taegan Goddard's Political Dictionary

To put it mildly, Taegan Goddard is one of the online political world's heavy hitters. His site, Political Wire, which dates back to 1999, is one of the oldest political blogs. In 2008, PC Magazine named it one of the 20 best political Web outlets. His site is a one-stop shop for the latest news, and is a must-read for insiders and outsiders at every level.

I first met Goddard after designing the logo for the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, a coalition to which an old site of mine belonged. He soon asked me to design logos for three new sites (shown with the LBAN logo here). I was very excited to not only be working for someone of his stature, but to also enjoy the opportunity to meld two of my passions - design and politics.

Just like I was excited recently when Goddard wrote with the chance to work on another new venture, something he's calling Taegan Goddard's Political Dictionary. Much like the Urban Dictionary but for politics, Goddard's site leverages both the founder's insider know-how and his online brand equity. With that equity in mind, here's the masthead I developed:

It was important to incorporate the U.S. Capitol dome from Goddard's main site, just as it was important to maintain its blue and red color palette. Casey provided some very insightful art direction and together we added the list of potential Political Dictionary entries, set in a neutral gray. The mix of traditional political topics and more recent slang in the list speaks to the breadth Goddard hopes to achieve with his new site.

As you know, I'm a sucker for process, so I also wanted to share with you the logo options that ended up on the cutting room floor. I love to hash out as many options as possible, and this project was no different. Here, to start, was the logo that, at Goddard's suggestion, mirrored the Political Wire masthead:

As you can see, there were two finalists for the name, one being Political Words and the other being Political Dictionary. This logo works, and would have suited Goddard's brand, but I wanted to also offer departures from this look that still felt familiar.

For the above option, I wanted to develop an icon that resembled the open dictionaries I remember being centrally located in our schools' libraries - but also with a field of blue with red stripes combining to look like the American flag. While the option on the right faithfully included Goddard's Capitol dome, I liked how the option on the left was more flag-like, owing to the star-as-counter within the "P".

In this series of options, I wanted to play with quotation marks and how they could be used in a more iconic sense. I'm a frequent user of scare quotes, so I liked the whimsical use of them surrounding the Capitol, a hat-tip toward the opinion so many have about their representatives. I also liked using them as stars, though the resulting flag was a bit too simplistic for me. The bottom option was more masthead-like in appearance, which was important to include.

I tend to wear my progressive politics on my sleeve, so the final option was my commentary on the secretive nature of the last administration. What information that was eventually allowed in the sunlight was often heavily redacted, evidenced by the heavy black strokes covering so much of the sensitive material. For this look, I treated the masthead as a paragraph in such a memo, with everything redacted except for the site's title.

All in all, the Political Dictionary project was very exciting, and I enjoyed the flexibility to develop multiple options, some traditional and some a departure. The final logo offers a simple solution, and fits in quite nicely with Goddard's primary site. So stop by Political Dictionary and expand your insider lingo. You'll learn something new - I promise.

Comments

[Kristofer Henry]

HECK YEAH JOSEPH!!