The typography of politics 
On Sunday, June 7, 2009, Belgium holds both European and regional elections. Now that the campaign has started in earnest, I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at the typography of politics. What typefaces are used by which political parties. Are they trying to tell us something through their choice of type, and does it correctly reflect what they stand for? If my political preference is noticeable in this article, well, I’m only human.
The extreme right-wing party Vlaams Belang claim in their propaganda that they are the only party to say what we really think. This is a tall order, and personally I think they just repeat their slogans loud and often enough that they think people end up thinking that is indeed what they were thinking… I think. Anyway, the typography on their electoral posters is just as loud and brash. Their logo is set in Futura Extra Bold Condensed, and the bright yellow on black Impact, often digitally stretched, lends the necessary… err… impact to their message. I don’t like it, but it is a consistent and appropriate visualisation.
NVA is the other nationalist party, situated at the very right side of the political spectrum as well. I suspect their logo also is a digitally stretched Impact or Helvetica Inserat or something similar. Antique Olive Nord would’ve given much better results. The NVA posters are set in the lively yet conservative-looking Bell Gothic. Unfortunately for them the white letters with black outlines look cheap, as they are reminiscent of the typography found in tabloids and gossip magazines. I would not call this type treatment quite befitting a political party.
For an updated and expanded version of Bell Gothic see Tobias Frere-Jones’ Griffith Gothic.
The logo for liberal party Lijst Dedecker is a bit of a joke – with its disco-style cyan and orange letters it is better suited for some pirate radio station. It even makes the two politicians on this particular poster look like radio show hosts. The typography on the poster is an awkward alliance of Helvetica and Arial, with Helvetica Condensed thrown in the mix. These inconsistencies in their visual style make it difficult to believe LDD have an art director responsible for their communication – Fabrice Morreau, formerly of the aforementioned Vlaams Belang and responsible for the latter’s successful current logo.
An additional bit of information for our American readers: the liberals here are still very right of the centre.
Equally inconsistent are the posters for the original liberal party OpenVLD. In an effort to seem more friendly and accessible they switched to lowercase italic ITC Officina for their logo when they changed their name in 2007. There barely is a unified style, with posters sporting Helvetica Condensed, Helvetica Inserat, News Gothic, Myriad, and all kinds of different hues of blue. Then again, some of the fundamental principles of liberalism are individuality, free enterprise, and rejection of government control, so every candidate doing whatever he/she feels like on his/her poster actually makes this hodgepodge a logical outcome.
I was quite shocked to see CD&V (Christian liberal party, centre right) and Groen (“Green”, eco-friendly left-wing) – ideologically quite far removed – adopting identical graphic languages, except for the colour of course. Both use Helvetica Bold in colour boxes with rounded edges and a border. The rigid and steadfast look of Helvetica is a conceptually sound choice for a conservative party like CD&V, but I would’ve expected the green party to be a tad more dynamic and forward-looking. Corpid, their previous typeface, was an equally poor choice (conceptually speaking that is, as it is a fine quality type family). Its name is literally an abbreviation of “corporate identity”, and Luc(as) de Groot designed the family specifically for use in corporate communication. And large corporations are something the green party traditionally oppose.
Same goes for sp.a which swapped Verdana (and previously TheSans, still present in the logo) for Helvetica as well. One could argue that the Belgian socialists have moved closer to the centre so Helvetica suits them now, but still… Helvetica used to be the people’s typeface, of Modernism and the International Style. However these days it is more often associated with financial institutions, car companies, and other faceless organisations that are closely tied with the current economic crisis. Just like with Groen it simply doesn’t fit with their ideology.
It came a bit as a surprise to discover an sp.a poster that breaks with the otherwise very consistent visual style of the party. The communication around the two local heavyweights Freya Van den Bossche and Daniel Termont – posters, flyers, and so on – is entirely set in FF Avance, a forward-looking choice if you pardon the pun. It all looks great, very distinctive in display sizes on the posters, and the text in the flyers reads marvellously well. Top choice.
Although they still play it very safe with two established bestsellers typographically speaking the extreme left wing pvda succeeds in breaking away from the pack. Their logo is designed with FF Dax, arguably the most successful of the spurless sans serifs. FF Meta used to be the alternative choice, but quickly became established as “the Helvetica of the nineties”. These days it’s not really a novel choice anymore. Furthermore they could have used the Headline versions, unless they really wanted to use the proletarian text versions. Yet both humanist designs correspond with their ideology, so good choices altogether.
Typographically speaking the winners of these elections are SLP, the left liberal party that changed its name on the first day of the year from the frankly unpronounceable and ill-conceived Vl.Pro. With a nice combination of two hues of violet and tasteful black and white photography, their posters are stylish and emanate a relaxed class. The typography is the star here. The squarish letters making up their logo may look slightly awkward, but Klavika strikes just the right tone. The overall feel is solid and subdued, yet the letter shapes are undeniably modern and reveal dynamic details, plus the design is surprisingly warm and human for a straight-sided tech sans. A clear winner.
:: U P D A T E ::
To my surprise I learned in the comments below that this post has made its way – via the Facebook page of Geert Lambert, head of the aforementioned SLP party – to www.deredactie.be, the news site of the Belgian national television. The translation is dodgy and they misunderstood some details, but nonetheless it is nice to see a focus on typography in the mainstream press. :) SLP have already won the elections…
BTW Just to avoid any misunderstandings: I do not particularly endorse the SLP, nor do I have anything to do with the politician picking up the story on his Facebook page.
:: U P D A T E :: OK, now this is starting to freak me out. This story was also picked up by the newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, and regional television station RTV requested the text (dunno what they will do with it). What’s next? |
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And what about Brussels, or be damned, the french part of Belgium ? Should too be interesting.
I can eventually took my camera in the street in Brussels if it helps !
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Oh yes, definitely! If you can send me similar images please do send me. I didn't get to Brussels nor Wallony lately, so I have no pictures from there. Please make sure they are at least 440px wide.
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Great article Yves.I always found it a bit funny/ironic that the Blok was using Futura, knowing that Paul Renner was once a prisoner of the nazi's. In the end, it's a bit sad, it shows how indifferent belgian art-directors are to typography ? or are they just afraid for change. I mean, Helvetica? Why no Gotham? ;-)IMHO most of the graphic designers in Belgium pay (almost) no attention to typography ? in contrast to the Netherlands. Yves? article clearly demonstrates this. Is it a problem of ignorance or education?
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The handling of the images is noteworthy as well, especially the frizzy halo Mr Bouckaert has. Did nobody brief the photographer that the background was going to be dark?
In general the conclusion has to be that politicians do not have the best of taste, but that is no news, right?
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Very nice article. Hope it gets read by many politicians.
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So, what font would you recommend for a progressive Green party? :)
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Nice article! What most people forget though, is that most of the time the conversation goes something like
* "And by when do you need it?"
- Yesterday
* "And what is your budget?"
- As close to zero as possible
Se yeah, I do believe that designing political campaigns is somewhat of a different assignment than any other. It might explain the bad choice (did they even conciously pick a font as opposed to "the best, most readable, least distinctive alternative that is already installed"?) in typography as well.
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Intersting stuff. Yesterday afternoon, I took the opportunity to have a look at the eloctoral posters in my town, in the south of the country. My first conclusion is that brother parties from the two sides of the linguistic border don't share a common program? at least for typography.Dax, the font of PVDA, is used by the green party of Wallonia, Ecolo.Not surprisingly, Helvetica as its partisans in Wallonia just like in the dutch-speaking part of Belgium. But I don't think that the socialists know that they give their vote to the typeface choosen by the Lijst Dedecker. To their credit, I have to say that their identity is based on Helvetica (HelveticaNeue) since the adoption of their new logo some years ago.The problem is the same for the Christian Democrats of cdH who are relying on the bold simplicity of Impact, just like the Vlaams Belang in the north of the country?The liberal party MR is a little bit more original with Meta.You may have a look at some photos of the posters at the following address: http://www.pixels-et-papier.org/blog/?p=509By the way, Yves, did you see the new layout of the newspaper La Libre Belgique? The main typefaces are FF Unit et Amalia. |
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Here is the correct link. The one I posted in the previouscomment seems damaged as the carriage returns were automatically removed?
http://www.pixels-et-papier.org/blog/?p=509 |
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Very interessting article :)
you can read it, with the link to this website, on www.deredactie.be :)
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Oy, now that is a surprise! Featured on the website of the news service for the Belgian national television. Wow! It's a shame they misunderstood some details, but a very nice reference nonetheless. :)
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And another one: Het Nieuwsblad also picked up this story, mistranslated bits included.
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Whoa, just noticed the mistake was mine! I meant to write "black and white photography", but somehow it ended up as "black and white typography". Major typo. :/
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Nice work. Well conceived, well researched, well documented, well built, well written. Well done.
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Excellent analyse and article; sad that you didn't analyse those of the french community as well!
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I received some more photographs of political posters last week, so I will try to get something online soon with Thierry's images and the new ones.
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Wow, that's quite the liberal translation they made there on deredactie.
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i think SLP just proved that typography can't change the world.
It's still a cool hobby, though.
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