I was in San Diego this past weekend for fun and found no shortage of election signs.
Love
This sign farthest on the right emphasizes the name, role, and the familiar symbol of a fireman’s hat. All are easy to depict and this photo was in fact taken while riding by as a car passenger. The candidate chose to render a hat and thus is applying the von Restorff Effect to differentiate as most signs are pure text. With closer inspection once can see the remaining elements are the candidate’s firs name and a phrase stating this person has firefighter support. This later point alludes to the candidate having backing of a respected group of the community to further entrench credentials from an authoritative source.
Hate
The sign endorsing Brower uses similar elements to the sign I liked including emphasizing the name and role as well as having a community backer. It also uses the alignment principle more cleanly than my loved sign. However, the numerous font sizes detracted from understanding which was the most important. For example was it more important upon quick glance to read “for judge” or “JAG to judge?” This later phrase also provides what appears to be an acronym that perhaps some might not understand. What is JAG? Short for Jaguar? Judge approved gentleman? And yet this slogan is highlighted somewhat prominently and placed towards the top. In my opinion it applied Hick’s Law in a negative way by using too many font sizes and styles.
Hat tip to Liliana for the verbiage used in her post to clarify endorsement. I similarly do not advocate for or against any particular candidates and have evaluated these signs merely for class purposes.
– By Q aka Alex Duong
Thanks Yao. I didn’t consider the aspect of stacking multiple copies together to create a larger geometric effect. I can see how stacking the right amount and spacing them out over a few miles of road can create a powerful, possibly subliminal “reinforcement” mechanism .
I see why you loved the first group of signs, I also found it more visually attractive when people use consistent visual designs and reduplicate multiple copies in the signage to increase visibility. The second example you hate is just “messy and noisy”, by grouping everything together, none of the signs stand out. Such a terrible layout. I think you have a lot to offer to those campaign leaders. 🙂