Lots of people have mentioned the loveliness of the Obama campaign logo, with its stripey field, rising sun, and handy reminder of the first letter of the candidate’s name. While I’ve already spent some time analyzing and mocking the McCain campaign’s terrible design work, something occurred to me watching another one of his angry mobs rallies on TV yesterday: his “logo,” a shaded 5-pointed star, is nothing but a Zapf Dingbat. Zapf Dingbats, for the un-font-obsessed, was one of the original “symbol” fonts; instead of letters, typing on your keyboard gets you various shapes and doodads to spice up your PowerPoint presentation–snowflakes, squares, check-marks, and yes, stars. So, which letter do you think one must type while using the Zapf Dingbats font to create McCain’s star, my friends? That’s right: his crack team of designers came across this patriotic symbol by typing shift-O.
After the jump, the Zapf Dingbats character map, just as proof.