Typography is much bigger than a "gotcha" moment for the visually challenged. Typography can silently influence: It can signify dangerous ideas, normalize dictatorships, and sever broken nations. In some cases it may be a matter of life and death. And it can do this as powerfully as the words it depicts.
I'm not interested in whether Clinton or Trump had good logos. I'm interested in the different values they reveal. Clinton's typography embodies the spirit of modernism and enlightenment values. It was designed to appeal to smart, progressive people who like visual puns. They appreciate the serendipity of an arrow that completes a lettermark while also symbolizing progress. In other words, coastal elites who like "design."
Trump's typography speaks with a more primal, and seemingly earnest voice. "Make America Great Again" symbolizes "Make America Great Again." It tells everyone what team you're on, and what you believe in. Period. It speaks to a distrust of "clean" corporate aesthetics and snobs who think they're better than Times New Roman on a baseball cap. Its mere existence is a political statement.
The two typographies are mutually intelligible at first glance, but a lot gets lost in translation. We live in a divided country, split on typographic lines as cleanly as the Serbs and the Croats.
The stakes are higher than you think. The next generation of fascists will not love geometric sans serifs as much as Mussolini did. They won't be threatening journalists in blackletter.
Quick! Get James Lileks, STAT. He KNOWS fonts.
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