THE political candidates have hit the road and the social media. Visibility will be the key strategy.
Up close and personal is how many voters would prefer it. To pump hands, to lock eyes with if only for a split second, or to get a whiff of the candidate’s baby cologne.
These have been suffice to pick up votes.
But since the national candidates will not be able to cover enough grounds - what with more than 7,000 islands and the Wuhan virus lurking, campaign materials will talk louder than the enunciated programs of governance.
Campaign strategists will think in terms of sound bites. And, much more, they will think images. Impactful, indelible images.
Election season is usually a bumper crop time for artists. Their buttons will be pressed to spit out posters, streamers, billboards, comics, handbills and art cards.
On top of ads on television or content streaming, there are memes galore and motion graphics for platforms like Tiktok.
Graphic designers will be giving weights to fonts, colors, contrasts, legibleness and their subliminal messages. Will Helvetica, blue, and red dominate again?
And, since the color yellow has been demonized for now, will pink be the national banner of an apparently ragtag team against the evil empire?
But how effective really is “good design” in informing or influencing voters? What do voters care?
A study of elections by Nanyang Technology University of Singapore in 2014 says that the voters in their country are “designapathetic.”
They lack design sensibility and place design “a low importance in (their) society.”
If that is true for a progressive country with a high literacy rate, what about in the Philippines?
“There are many do’s and don’ts of political graphic design,” says Domenica Ghanem of Three Design Communications, a studio specializing in political campaigns, based in Memphis.
“Do your research on the audience, understanding the audience is key when deciding fonts, colors, images and sizes,” she advises.
This claim is contrary to what Nanyang Technology University concluded because it implies different responses and, by inference, levels of design acuity.
If one material could work for urban workers in Tondo, it could fail for fisherfolk of Masbate.
Today, the way people perceive has become a poser. Unlike before.
The blue and the red were cleverly appropriated by Ferdinand E. Marcos who got re-elected as president with a brutal presidential campaign that originated the “fake news” strategy against his opponent Sergio Osmeña in 1968.
Osmeña was painted as a Japanese collaborator during World War II, while Marcos was portrayed as a war hero with an array of medals that were, years later, shown to be false. Gawa rin kaya sa Recto?
If I am not mistaken, Marcos’ campaign materials even in 1965 were designed by the Medis group headed by Senator Blas Ople.
They were sleek and powerful and made use of the colors of the Philippine flag.
In recent times, blue and red were adopted with successful results by Francis Tolentino for senator and Isko Moreno for mayor.
Recall that Domagoso had sophisticated television ads in his bid for senator but failed.
Even if he paid millions of pesos for airtime. Huwag nyo tanungin kung saan galing ang pambayad. Kayo naman.
Not even the most perfect ad can deliver.
As an aside, I also remember Juan Ponce Enrile in a television ad with him seated and looking pious while, at the back, sun streaks washed a majestic tree as if angels would start dancing. He lost.
He also lost an election where he had simple but attractive posters all over the city, while Nora Aunor sang on the radio: “Malinis ang record ni Enrile.” Zonrox kaya pinanglinis nya ng mga records?
The blue and red as an element of design had its test in the Marcos-Cory Aquino face-off where yellow was the emotional color.
While the Marcos camp had its usual clean designs, Cory’s materials were halo-halo kalamay. There was no central direction.
People from all walks of life were simply doing their own home-grown artworks and putting them in the pot. Blocks of voters became their own design guilds.
We know what happened. Yellow became the swatch of a peaceful revolution.
Lutong bahay designs worked in many instances.
When cash-strapped human rights lawyer Rene Saguisag ran for senator, he just used old newspapers on which they crudely painted “Ampunin si Saguisag.”
And voila, the dancing senator had a winning poster.
When Gloria Arroyo was lagging in the surveys when she first ran for a national position, the poster that clicked was with the photo of her looking like Nora Aunor.
What do we draw from these? There are designs, no matter how well done, will fail to connect. And there are designs, no matter how kitschy, will appeal to many voters.
The professional artists must feel the audiences. And they must be humble enough to accept that “ordinary people” would sometimes have sharper design sensibilities because they are in the zone.
Makinig.
The Pink Team will be facing well-oiled, well-funded, and even vicious machines.
How it will draw from the people to counter propaganda, black or otherwise, will spell victory or death.
For, at the end of the day, desperate, starving people will only recognize one design – one that has the faces of Jose Abad Santos, Vicente Lim, and Josefa Llanes Escoda.