Ms. Adverthinker

More on the influence and importance of design: this week the NY Times had an article contrasting and comparing the websites of Obama and Clinton as if one were a Mac and one a PC.  This further illustrates the point made earlier this week in the comparison of font use by the different presidential candidates–never underestimate the power of good design.  According to the NY Times article:

“The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.

That is, Mr. Obama’s site is more harmonious, with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette. Its task bar is reminiscent of the one used at Apple’s iTunes site. It signals in myriad ways that it was designed with a younger, more tech-savvy audience in mind — using branding techniques similar to the ones that have made the iPod so popular.”

“In contrast to barackobama.com, Mrs. Clinton’s site uses a more traditional color scheme of dark blue, has sharper lines dividing content and employs cookie-cutter icons next to its buttons for volunteering, and the like.”

The article does question, however, if this “being a Mac” is good politics:

“While Apple’s ad campaign maligns the PC by using an annoying man in a plain suit as its personification, it is not clear that aligning with the trendy Mac aesthetic is good politics. The iPod may be a dominant music player, but the Mac is still a niche computer. PC, no doubt, would win the Electoral College by historic proportions (with Mac perhaps carrying Vermont).”

This is from an article in Advertising Age:

“Research from internet ad network Mindset Media confirms the ad’s personification of Mac users as superior and self-satisfied.  Its recent Mac user ‘mind-set profile’–a psychographic ranking system that scores respondents on 20 different elements of personality–found them to be more assured of their superiority, less modest and more open of the general population.”

“Far fewer cohesive personality traits emerged among PC owners, likely because of the breadth of PC ownership.  Given that 95% or so of all computer users own a PC, those users essentially are the general population.  The one area where PC users did stand out as statistically different was in creativity–low creativity, that is.  Mindset Media found they tend to be realists who are emotionally steady and work well with what they’re given.”

This makes total sense.  I don’t think research really had to be conducted to learn these things, but it is interesting that now there are statistics to confirm it.