United we cough

We don't normally comment on graphic design, even though it's a huge part of branding and commodity peddling. But the other day President Obama dropped a message into our inbox asking for stories about health care misadventures, very similarly to what Michael Moore did in preparing material for his last documentary, Sicko. We've been feeling pretty good for quite a while and so had no horror stories to share, but before deleting the message we happened to catch this:


Whoever Obama's got on the team making graphics, s/he's a genius deserving a very large raise in pay. Just look at all the stuff going on in this little blue box — starting with the brilliant reworking of the famous "O" logo that incorporated a shimmering flag, a glowing sunrise, an exquisite blue sky, and... well, a big O. That "O" now has sprouted a gorgeous luminescent blue eagle atop the Medicine logo that grows from the sunrise in the original O, while yet another sunrise — much bigger and grander than the original — shines above the expanded logo and even includes stars — night is literally turned to day, darkness to light. And who does the double-sunrise shine over? All Americans, standing from the rocky Atlantic to the calm Pacific on an ocean of absolute calm.

Everything's going to be fine. Let yourself float into the blueness. Of course, socialized medicine isn't all beauty and grace, being administered by bureaucrats, but hey, this isn't about reality. This is about image. After all, didn't SNL used to say something about it being better to look good than to feel good?
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