tl;dr: I reveal the winner of the vote for best-looking Howard Couny 2018 campaign sign.

. . . and it’s the sign for Shahan Rizvi, candidate for Democratic Central Committee. His sign got 37% of the total vote. Congratulations Shahan on your victory!

The next two highest vote-getters were the signs for Byron Macfarlane (28% of the total vote) and Sabina Taj (15%). Condolences to Byron and Sabina: your signs looked good, but I think Shahan’s highly-effective get-out-the-vote efforts made all the difference.

Thanks to all of you who participated in the voting not just in the final round but in earlier rounds as well. I hope you enjoyed these posts!

Now I’ll be back to posting on other matters. If you want to keep up with my future posts (which I doubt will be nearly this interesting) you can follow me as @hecker on Twitter. I’ll also post any Howard County-relevant stuff in the Howard County Facebook group.

tl;dr: After you vote in today’s 2018 Maryland primary, vote for the best-looking Howard County 2018 campaign signs among those that made it to the final round.

Polls are now closed for voting for the signs discussed in parts 1 through 6 of this series. The following candidates’ signs were the winners and runners-up for each part (with their percentage of the vote in parentheses):

• Part 1. Winner: Kim Oldham (56%). Runner-up: Greg Jennings (15%).
• Part 2. Winners: Deb Jung and Shahan Rizvi (tie) (32%).
• Part 3. Winner: Danny Mackey (35%). Runner-up: Christiana Rigby (29%).
• Part 4. Winner: Sabina Taj (77%). Runner-up: Rich Gibson (9%).
• Part 5. Winner: Liz Walsh (54%). Runner-up: Jessica Feldmark (32%).
• Part 6. Winner: Byron Macfarlane (52%). Runner-up: Opel Jones (24%).

The following candidates’ signs will advance to the final round of eight (in random order): Deb Jung, Liz Walsh, Byron Macfarlane, Jessica Feldmark, Shahan Rizvi, Sabina Taj, Kim Oldham, and Danny Mackey.

The signs for Deb Jung and Shahan Rizvi both advanced because they finished in a dead heat, with the exact same number of votes. I also included Jessica Feldmark’s sign as my wild card choice, since it was the runner-up with the highest percentage of the vote share (the same as Jung’s and Rizvi’s signs, as it happens).

Please vote for your choice of the best-looking sign of those listed above. Extended voting hours will run until 11 pm on Election Day, so you can vote for your favorite sign while you attend the parties after the real polls close. Check Twitter and Facebook tomorrow to see which sign won!

tl;dr: Here’s my final set of reviews of Howard County 2018 campaign signs. This post features signs from Opel Jones, Steven Bolen, Bill McMahon, China Williams, Wayne Robey, Byron Macfarlane, Gail Bates, Katie Fry Hester, and Robert Miller.

Today I have only nine signs to review. Every post thus far has included only signs that I saw at the Miller Branch library during early voting. This post includes one other sign, for Wayne Robey, that I saw in my own neighborhood.

There are a number of other candidates who did not have signs at the Miller Branch library or other places I’ve looked. Typically these are candidates who are not actively campaigning or have no opposition in the primary and will post signs later. I don’t plan on doing an update of this series for the general election, so signs for this latter group of candidates will go unreviewed this year.

As always, the signs are listed in random order, there’s a survey link at the end, and you can find more background at part 1.

This is a good simple sign that has multiple strategies to avoid being boring. First, the star in the middle of the letter “o“ in “Jones” lends visual interest to the text and breaks up the all caps single typeface nature of it. Second, the use of a second color highlights “Opel” just as the star did for “Jones”. Finally, the yellow strip at the bottom echoes the color of “Opel” and underlines the sign as a whole.

Of all the signs I’ve seen that try to use a map of Maryland as a design element, this is the only one where I think it works. Maryland has a strange asymmetrical shape, so it’s difficult to fit into a design. The secret here is to use the northern and eastern boundaries of Maryland to complete the rectangle of which “Steven” and “Bolen” form the left and bottom sides.

The other parts of the sign work well too: the brownish orange and blue match well, the text looks clean and readable, and it’s a nice touch to have the color of “District 9A” match the color of the Maryland map.

The only things I’m not 100% on board with are the wavy lines that evoke the shape of a fluttering flag. They’re OK as a way to fill the space above and below the main sign content, and I really can’t imagine a good alternative, but for some reason they didn’t totally win me over.

As I mentioned in my last post, for some reason candidates for Howard County Sheriff are fond of the black on yellow color scheme: Jim Fitzgerald used this color scheme in 2014, and Marcus Harris is also using it this year.

This is a reasonably good example of the type: readable, with good emphasis on the name “McMahon,” and a sheriff’s-badge design element that doesn’t over-complicate the design. It has a slogan, but it’s nice and crisp.

A good minimal high-contrast sign that provides the key information needed by voters. It’s worth noting that “China” is almost twice as large as “Williams”. This is partly dictated by the last name being significantly longer, and thus less tall when both names occupy the width of the sign. However it also makes sense from a name recognition perspective, since “China” is more memorable than “Williams.”

This is a good example of using red, white, and blue together: the red ribbon and blue star design elements together give a bright and even playful air to the sign that makes it more attractive.

The black text also provides good contrast with the white background. However I’m not really sure why such a blocky and angular typeface was chosen for “Robey”. It looks a bit strange, especially since the red and blue design elements are curved.

Byron Macfarlane has a record of good-looking signs, and this one is in that tradition: legible and minimal text, clean and bold typography, attractive colors that go well together, and a jaunty design element in the upper left. Note that it follows the same strategy as several other signs of contrasting alternating lines of white and colored text throughout the sign.

Also note that “Byron” is set in a slight larger size than “Macfarlane,” even though it really doesn’t need to be (since “Byron” isn’t intended to take up the full width of the sign. However making “Byron” larger provides better visual balance against both “Macfarlane” and the design element in the upper left. It also has the side effect of implying the candidate is a familar presence and on a first-name basis with his constituents after two terms in office.

This sign is almost but not quite identical to the sign that Gail Bates used in 2014. The only change I can discern is that the new sign omits the word “For” in “For State Senate”—probably because this year Bates is an incumbent.

Because I’m getting tired I’ll just quote my comments from 2014:

This is a good sign, especially for using only two colors. The “BATES” is large and readable in a clear serif typeface, and the smaller “Gail” in a script typeface adds a nice informal, almost personal, note. The integration of the Maryland flag-inspired banner is also done very well; note that the banner is outlined to prevent confusion between the sign background and the white parts of the banner.

(The outline I was referring to is the one on top of the banner where it meets the border of the sign.)

This particular example of the sign is marred (in my opinion) by the endorsement logos, but the sign underneath is pretty good. I like the colors, with the light purple of “Katie Fry” contrasting well with the dark purple background and the white text of “Hester”. Setting “Katie Fry” right above “Hester” with almost no linespacing also provides a little visual interest where the descender of the “y” intrudes just a bit on the “T.”

Unlike the China Williams sign above with “China” featured prominently, this sign puts much more emphasis on the last name “Hester”. Here the situation is reversed: “Hester” is a more unusual name than “Katie,” and so it makes sense to make it the focus of the sign and to relegate “Katie Fry” to a secondary role.

I’m not sure if the greenish-gray background color on this sign was intended to evoke a blackboard or not. In any case, while I’m not a big fan of that particular color it does provide a good contrast with the white text. The text itself is clear and readable.

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m not a fan of putting endorsement logos on signs. The color of the two “Teacher Recommended” logos here clashes somewhat with the background color, and the logos look a bit strange perched on the “shoulders” of “Miller.”

However the design element I’m more concerned about is the steering wheel at the middle of the bottom white stripe. Someone down my street has this sign in their yard, and I must have passed it dozens of times. I also saw it at even closer range when I went to vote. However it was not until I actually looked closely at the sign when reviewing it that I finally figured out that the thing at the bottom was a steering wheel, and I was able to connect it with the “Learning driven” slogan.

In the interest of a simpler design and not confusing people looking at the sign, I think it might have been better to leave the steering wheel off and just include the slogan. Alternately the design could be revamped entirely to make the steering wheel bigger and make it a more integral part of the design.

And with that I conclude my reviews, after discussing 58 signs in all. Please vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

A special bonus: tomorrow (Primary Tuesday) please check Twitter and Facebook for your opportunity to vote for the best of the best. I will create one final survey with the winners of each day’s vote and (if appropriate) a “wild card” entry I feel deserves inclusion, and will do a final post on Wednesday with the top three vote-getters.

tl;dr: I’m in the home stretch now in the race to review Howard County 2018 campaign signs. This post features signs from Hiruy Hadgu, Natalie Ziegler, Jessica Feldmark, John Francis McMahon, Clarence Lam, James Howard, Liz Walsh, Ian Moller-Knudsen, Marcus Harris, and Jeremy Eldridge.

You should know the drill by now: ten signs, ten reviews, order is random, survey link at the end, more background at part 1.

The color is an unusual choice relative to other political signs, but I think it works well and gives a good contrast with the white lettering. You also certainly can’t fault the prominence and legibility of the candidate’s name—helped here by the fact that both first and last names have only five characters each.

The first name actually looks slightly larger than the last name. This appears to be due to the first name having an “i” rather than an “a”. Since all the other characters in each name are the same or of similar width, setting both names to the same overall width forces the last name to be slightly smaller to fit, since the letter “i” is narrower than the letter “a.”

The only thing I would question on this sign is the treatment of the “for” in “Democrat for County Council,” which is just set in a lighter version of the same typeface used for the rest of the line. It might have been better to set it in lower case and italics, a strategy used on other signs.

Candidates love endorsements, but fans of candidates’ signs like me hate them because they often result in endorsement logos being slapped on signs and obscuring the design. That’s the case here, with the Sierra Club green in particular clashing greatly with the red and blue color scheme.

Although it’s interesting: if the endorsement logos weren’t there it looks like there’d be a lot of space between “Delegate for 9A” and “Natalie”. It’s almost as if the sign were designed to leave sufficient space for the logos.

Otherwise the sign looks fine. Note the inclusion of a thin white strip between to the red and blue parts of the sign to avoid directly juxtaposing those two colors and give the sign more of a “red, white, and blue” feel.

This sign takes a different approach, boldly interrupting a blue background with a diagonal slash of bright red. It also uses drop shadows on the text for “Jessica Feldmark,” a unique choice among 2018 signs, making the text seem to float above the blue and red background.

The overall result is a sign that looks good and stands out from the crowd.

There’s not a whole lot to say about this sign. The green background is common among Democratic candidates here and elsewhere, and the main typeface is legible and looks professional. The only design element is the badge icon within the letter “o”. Candidates for sheriff (almost?) always include some form of badge in their signs; this one is well-integrated into the overall design.

This sign is very reminiscent of Clarence Lam’s 2014 sign: bold yellow text in the same sans serif typeface, a dark background to provide high contrast, and a small horizontally-centered banner-like design element to add some visual interest but not detract from the candidate’s name.

It’s worth noting that the 2014 signs for Eric Ebersole and Terri Hill were somewhat quirky and visually busy. Now that they’re on a slate with Clarence Lam they’ve adopted his philosophy of stripped-down “get it done” minimalism when it comes to signs. As with Lam’s 2014 sign, I don’t think this philosophy produces signs that are particularly attractive or interesting from a design perspective, but they are undeniably effective when it comes to the basic job of promoting the candidates’ names.

This sign is in many ways the opposite of the Lam/Ebersole/Hill sign, and shows that there is such a thing as being too subtle from a design perspective. First, why is the candidate’s name so relatively small? There’s a lot of unused area on this sign that could have been devoted to text.

Second, what is the image on the bottom of the sign supposed to be? At first glance I thought it was an American flag. At second glance I thought it was a Maryland flag. Now I’m doubting even that.

If you’ve read this series thus far you’ll know that I like to see design sophistication and even elegance in signs. But I also think that to be effective as signs they need to be more “in your face” than this one is.

I chose the order of these signs randomly (or rather, my computer did it for me), but it’s almost as if the order were designed to help me make certain points. Here’s a good example of a sign that employs sophisticated design in the service of highlighting the candidate.

There are at least four separate design “tricks” in the sign. The first and most prominent is the use of a light blue background with dark blue diagonal stripes (or a dark blue background with light blue stripes, depending on how you look at it). This is very attention-grabbing, almost looking like a glossy metallic surface over which the white text floats.

The second is the rounded corners on the background, reminiscent of an old-style TV set. By leaving the actual corners of the sign blank, this focuses attention on the middle of the sign where the candidate’s name is located.

The third is having the vertical stems of the letters “L” and “H” flow into the white border. (This was made possible in the first place because of the particular forms of those letters, and because “Liz Walsh” is a short enough name to fit on one line.) This impairs readability of the name just a tad, but produces a striking effect.

Fourth (and most subtle) is the thin black (?) outline on the white letters of the text. This helps to separate the letters from the light blue/dark blue background and make them “pop.”

Finally, the sign shows a good strategy for handling endorsement logos and other ancillary sign elements: don’t put them on the sign itself, but attach them to a corner where they’re prominent but don’t obscure the main part of the sign.

We’re now back to relatively plain signs. The sign designer here faced the problem that “Moller-Knudsen” is a long name that’s hard to fit on a sign without making the text relatively small. Some signs address that problem by breaking the name at the hyphen and splitting it across two lines—see for example the 2014 sign for Renée McGuirk-Spence.

I think a similar strategy could have been followed for this sign, especially since “Moller” and “Knudsen” are almost the same length. The extra line required could have been compensated for by removing the “Elect” text in the upper left corner. As it is that text sits all by itself and occupies space and visual attention that could instead go to the candidate’s name and office sought.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that candidates for Howard County Sheriff should use signs that consist of black text on a yellow background with a sheriff’s badge. Jim Fitzgerald had signs like this both in 2010 and 2014. (John Newnan had one in 2014 that reversed the scheme and used yellow on black.)

In this cycle the tradition is continued by Marcus Harris and (as we’ll see in the next post) Bill McMahon, while John Francis McMahon goes his own way (as seen above). Harris’s sign has the key elements, with the name displayed prominently and legibly in a conventional san serif typeface. The yellow is bright and not muddy, and the sign also has a white border, which I think always helps the main part of the sign stand out more. (At least one of Jim Fitzgerald’s signs didn’t have such a border, and I think suffered for it.)

The last sign for today is another sign for a Central Committee Candidate. I think the design for this sign flows from the candidate’s name being relatively long at eight characters and the choice to use all caps for the text. That means that the area for the name on the sign has to be relatively small (unless the letters were stretched vertically) and the designer has to fill the rest of the sign with other elements.

In this case the chosen strategy was to divide the sign horizontally into three areas of equal height, with the office sought and authority line in the bottom section and “Vote for” in the top section. It’s a reasonable approach, with my only nit being that the sign looks a little bottom-heavy because of the large amount of text in that section relative to the middle and (especially) top sections.

Otherwise the sign looks fine: the colors are attractive and the typography looks clean and readable.

49 signs reviewed thus far, and 9 to go; the next post should cover all the rest of them. Check Twitter and Facebook for the next article, and don’t forget to vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I’m continuing my reviews of 2018 campaign signs in Howard County. This post features signs from Mary Kay Sigaty, Shawn Conley, Sabina Taj, Anne Dodd, Elizabeth Ann Fitch, Saif Rehman, Rich Gibson, Allan Kittleman, David Yungmann, and Chao Wu.

As in the last post I review ten different signs, again in random order. For more on this series see part 1.

This sign is put together reasonably well, but it seems a bit busy to me. That’s likely because the Maryland flag (attractive though it may be) is a bit busy visually, and this sign devotes a fair amount of background space to it.

Otherwise the sign is fine. The typography is varied, with the typeface used for “Mary Kay” providing a note of informality. The sign also follows the rules for the four colors of the Maryland flag: match yellow with black (as in the “Mary Kay” and ”Democrat for State Senate” text) and match red with white (as in the “District 12” text), but never juxtapose red with yellow if you can help it.

This is sort of a middle-of-the-road sign: it’s legible, prominently features the key information, and has a little bit of a design element in the white stripe joining up with the descender of the “y,” but otherwise there’s not a lot that makes it stand out from the pack.

The one exception is the inclusion of a small photo of the candidate. This must have been intended for people encountering the sign close up, like at a voting location, because this would be almost impossible to make out if you were just driving by.

The thing that really jumps out at you about this sign is the horizontal slightly wavy stripe that forms the crossbar of the capital “A”. There’s actually a fair bit of subtlety to this element: if you look really closely you can see that there’s a thin black stripe separating the upper blue part of the stripe from the lower red part. I’m not sure exactly why it was included; possibly it’s to avoid directly juxtaposing red and blue, two colors that cause visual issues when seen side-by-side.

The horizontal stripe is echoed by the smaller stripe separating “Howard County” from “Board of Education”. This smaller stripe is also composed of three smaller stripes, red and blue with black between them.

Like Clarence Lam, Sabina Taj is blessed with a three-letter last name that can be displayed at an extremely large size. Her first name isn’t that long either, so it can be shown at a large size as well. In combination with the stripe design element and the high contrast between the dark blue text and the white background the result is a sign that does a very good job of highlighting the candidate’s name.

Like other Judge of the Orphans’ Court incumbents, Anne Dodd is reusing the design from her 2014 sign. Here’s what I wrote about it in the last cycle:

This is a good example of a effective minimal sign design: Only as much text as needed, a single and simple sans serif typeface (the “for” appears to be simply in an oblique version of the main typeface), no extraneous design elements, and only a single color other than white. I have only one criticism: When viewed from a distance the “D” and “O” in “DODD” look somewhat similar, so that the name looks like “OOOO” or “DDDD”. A different typeface might have helped this, or alternatively using both upper and lower case (“Dodd” vs. “DODD”).

The only change this time was to add the word “Re-elect” in the upper left corner, similar to what Nicole Bormel Miller did with her sign. This somewhat mars the pure minimalism of the original sign, but overall the sign still looks good.

Another Orphans’ Court sign, this one is an interesting case: the color is great, the typeface is elegant and “Fitch” stands out nicely, but to me the white rectangle around “Orphans’ Court” makes the sign look slightly bottom-heavy.

I presume the designer tried just using white text on the same blue background for “Orphans’ Court” and preferred the approach they ultimately took, possibly to make the name of the office stand out a bit more. I’m just a rank amateur, so I’m not going to second-guess their decision.

I will confess to a bias here: I generally don’t like signs that are just black (or in this case, what appears to be almost dark blue) text on an overall yellow background. I just don’t think it’s an attractive color combination, especially when those are the only two colors on the sign. I’ll try to put away that bias a bit for the moment, but even taking a more neutral attitude this sign doesn’t really stand out too much.

One thing I wonder about is whether the designer contemplated putting the candidate’s first name in the upper left. There’s plenty of room for it, and it would have balanced out the “Ph.D.” mortarboard in the upper right. As it is the empty space causes the sign to look a bit bottom heavy.

For some reason people running for State’s Attorney have a track record of producing excellent campaign signs: I thought Dario Broccolino’s 2014 sign was the overall best of that election cycle, and Kim Oldham’s sign in this cycle stands out as well.

Rich Gibson’s 2014 sign was no slouch either, but his new sign is even better in all respects: the 2014 black and orange colors have been upgraded to a deep blue and a brighter orange. All text is now in the same sans serif typeface, with some text in orange for visual contrast. (Note that it’s less important text: the candidate’s last name and office sought are still in white for maximum impact.)

The Howard County map design element has been replaced with two more effective elements, an orange checkmark that lends visual interest to “Gibson” and an element in the lower right corner that evokes the Maryland flag. (In case you’re interested, the official name for that part of the flag is a “cross bottony.”)

All in all this is a very good-looking sign that also checks all the boxes for what you want to see in a campaign sign.

As far as I can tell this is almost but not quite the same sign Allan Kittleman used in his 2014 race for Howard County Executive. The main change appears to be a change in aspect ratio: relative to the 2014 sign that I reviewed the current sign is wider, so that the letters appear to be less narrow than on the previous sign. (This doesn’t apply to the red banner though, which appears to have kept its previous width and now takes up a bit less of the total width of the sign.)

The old sign also had the website name in the lower right. It was removed from the new sign—probably a good idea, since it was small, hard to read, and detracted from the overall design.

Since the 2014 sign was a pretty good sign and Kittleman won that race, I presume he decided to stick with a winning formula. I’ll do the same, and just quote part of what I wrote last time:

I’ve previously written about the problems inherent in using all four colors of the Maryland flag in a single sign. This sign handles those problems as well as they can be handled, mainly by avoiding the red text on yellow background found in signs from Trent Kittleman, Frank Mirabile, and others. Instead this sign carefully restricts itself to the exact color juxtapositions found the Maryland flag: black with yellow, and red with white. More specifically, it restricts itself to what I think are the best color combinations: black text on a yellow background and white text on a red background.

Some other things to note about this sign: The typeface is clean and readable; it’s bold enough to stand out but light enough to allow adequate space between the letters. Using both upper and lower case in “Kittleman” means that the text isn’t quite as wide as it would be if it were in all upper case, and thus it can fit better on the sign. . . .

The red banner-like design element in the upper right corner is well-done; note that on the left side of the element the yellow background seems to form an arrowhead pointing to the “Proven Independent Leader” slogan. The slogan itself points diagonally upward to the right to make the sign more dynamic (the same technique used on the Dario Broccolino sign). Finally, note that the horizontal line separating “Kittleman” from “Howard County Executive” is not just red on yellow (a poor combination) but is both red and white in order to maintain the preferred color juxtapositions I mentioned above.

The one thing that bothered me about this sign is that the “Howard County Executive” seems a bit thin. When I was walking around the neighborhood I had some trouble making that text out when viewing the sign from a distance.

The increased width of the 2018 sign doesn’t help readability of the “Howard County Executive” text, since it’s now stretched out a bit further.

The color scheme on this sign is very reminiscent of the colors on Warren Miller’s 2014 sign: a very dark blue/black combined with a red that’s bright but not garish. I thought that was a very effective combination on Miller’s sign, and it looks good here too. The major difference is that this sign has blue/black on the top and red on the bottom, reversing the colors from Miller’s sign. For the record, I prefer red on top; I think having red on the bottom makes the sign look a bit top-heavy.

The most significant issue with this sign is not the fault of the designer. Rather it’s that “Yungmann” is a relatively long name, and to fit it within the vertical area allotted to it requires making the letters relatively tall and narrow. This is turn makes the name look horizontally squished and impairs readability somewhat.

In the last cycle Clarence Lam had the shortest last name of any candidate, and Lam’s 2014 sign took full advantage of that fact to make the candidate’s last name as prominent as possible. In this cycle Chao Wu goes Lam one better with a two-letter family name.

However, rather than having “Wu” totally take over the design, his sign exploits the fact that Wu’s given name is also short, so that the entire name can fit comfortably in one line and still be large enough to have good readability and high impact. It also use mixed upper and lower case for the name, which I think was a good decision: besides improving readability somewhat, it also helps ensure that voters don’t misinterpret “Chao Wu” as a single undifferentiated family name “CHAOWU.”

As far as other aspects, though Chao Wu is running for a nonpartisan position and I have no idea of his party affiliation he’s an independent, the sign color scheme looks very similar to is reminiscent of that used by Republicans David Yungmann and Warren Miller, with a deep blue/black and bright red. The major difference is that the blue/black is used for the text, not the background. I wonder what the sign would have looked like with the slogan in white text on a blue/black background (which would have matched Warren Miller’s sign); I suspect it would not have worked as well but have not tried this out in an image editor.

All in all this is a good sign, readable for the important bits (name and position sought) and with straightforward attractive colors and typeface. My only concern is with the slogan: I think it’s OK to have a slogan because the sign has only three lines, but it seems just a tad cluttered compared to the rest of the sign.

39 signs reviewed thus far, at least 18 to go—perhaps more if I can find signs for a few candidates who didn’t have signs at the Miller Branch early voting location. Check Twitter and Facebook for the next article, and don’t forget to vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I’m now at the halfway point in my reviews of 2018 campaign signs in Howard County. This post features signs from Christiana Rigby, Carleen Pena, Calvin Ball, Nicole Bormel Miller, Danny Mackey, Harry Dunbar, Guy Guzzone and fellow Team 13 members Vanessa Atterbeary, Shane Pendergrass, and Jen Terrasa, Courtney Watson, Steve Hunt, and Anita Pandey.

As in the last post I review ten different signs, again in random order. For more on this series see part 1.

This sign has a couple of interesting aspects. First, it features the candidate’s first name more prominently than her last name: the type size is the same and her first name is in a bolder version of the same typeface used for her last name. Is Rigby trying to build name recognition for herself based primarily on her first name (like “Krish for Maryland”), or is it just a fluke of the design?

Either way, that causes a problem for the design, since now “Rigby” looks relatively unbalanced on the left side. The large “Teacher Recommended” helps rebalance the design, but it also (at least to me) makes the sign look more like a Board of Education sign than a County Council sign—especially since “Democrat for County Council” is on a lighter background that provides less contrast for the text and impairs readability a bit.

Don’t get me wrong: I think this is overall an attractive and professional sign. I just wonder about the decisions that went into this particular design.

Every election cycle sees its share of what I’ll call “utilitarian” signs. These are basic signs with a white background and one other color, typically divided into three sections with the text and background colors reversed on the middle section, with the same plain sans serif typeface used on all three sections.

For a past example of this type of sign in its purest form see Kay Hartleb’s plain 2010 sign. This one varies the formula a bit by having four lines of text, so the middle section includes both “Carleen” and “Pena.”

Critiquing the design of a sign like this is somewhat beside the point. It does the job of putting the candidate’s name out there, and that’s about it. (Although I will say that I think the typeface on the top and bottom lines of text seems a bit thin for best readability, and putting “Carleen” on the left rather than centered makes the sign unbalanced.)

A good solid sign, professional looking but not flashy. The color scheme is good and somewhat reminiscent of that on Byron Macfarlane’s sign (to be reviewed in a future post), but it doesn’t “pop” quite as much. There’s also a nice contrast in the typography: lower case serif for the first name, upper case serif for the last name, then upper case san serif for the office.

Note the subtle green design elements on either side of “Calvin”: they’re a nice touch, helping the name visually balance against the larger last name, and echoing the green rectangle around “Howard County Executive.”

Like fellow Judge of the Orphans’ Court candidates Leslie Smith Turner and (as we’ll see) Anne Dodd, Nicole Bormel Miller is reusing the basic design from her 2014 sign. Here’s what I wrote about it in the last cycle:

This sign has a nice purple background color (a break from the usual yellow or red), a good balance between the white foreground and purple background, and an interesting serif typeface. As with the [Shari] Chase sign, I take points away for not spelling “Orphans’” properly.

The major change for this year’s sign is the addition of the “Re-elect” text in the upper left corner, since (unlike 2014) she’s running as an incumbent. That in turn forces the “Nicole Bormel” text to be smaller and further to the right. It’s still an attractive sign, but it now looks just a tad unbalanced.

I should add that Miller’s last name is quite common—in fact, it’s shared by two other candidates in this cycle, Warren Miller and Robert Miller—and she apparently always uses her middle name. Thus she has a lot of text to fit on a sign. I think using lower case on the top and bottom lines of text, with only “Miller” in upper case, helps lighten the look of the sign and make it look less dense.

Finally, not to be pedantic, there’s still no apostrophe on “Orphans’.”

This is a good sign. I was originally going to write that I wasn’t a fan of the background color, but in looking at the sign again I think it’s quite handsome—and because there’s no yellow in the sign it doesn’t remind me of the Washington Redskins. (This has nothing to do with my attitude toward the football team, I just don’t like their team colors, especially when the burgundy tilts to the bright side.)

The “Mackey” is quite visible and impactful, and the text size and condensed typeface on “Danny” matches it well. In fact, all the text on this sign looks good and has variety, despite all of it being in upper case and using variants of the same sans serif typeface.

A further nice subtle touch is shown on the stars to the right of “Danny”. The stars (or some other design element) are needed to balance out the left-justified “Danny,” but if the stars were solid white then they would pull focus from the candidate’s name. (I tried this out in an image editor to gauge the effect.) Instead the stars look like they were hand-drawn in scribbles, which both lets some of the background through, lightening the look of the stars, and also provides some informality in an otherwise fairly formal sign. (Folks, this is why you hire graphic design professionals.)

This sign does a good job of putting the candidate’s name front and center, as well as highlighting the office being sought. The colors are good as well, especially the red. Normally I don’t like to see red design elements directly on a blue background, because the contrast can be problematic. (We’ll see some other signs where this is true.) In this case though the brightness of the red and the white text within the red rectangle provide improved contrast and alleviate this concern.

It’s an open question whether it would be worth adding a design element in the upper left to balance the left-justified “Harry”. I tried something like this in an image editor and I’m not sure it was worth it.

I previously referred to Team 13’s 2014 sign as “bare-vanilla minimalism,” since it consisted of red text on a white background with only very minimal design elements.

This sign is less minimal, introducing as it does a new color (black) and a non-trivial design element that also serves to identify the candidates as ”Team 13”. I don’t think the black text is all that readable against the black background, but the sign accomplishes its purpose, namely to associate the names of the candidates in your mind as members of a slate. The text for those names looks good and has good contrast with the background.

Another blast from the past, this time from Courtney Watson, as she updates the sign design she used in 2010 in her (successful) race for County Council, abandoning the 2014 design she used in her (unsuccessful) race for County Executive. A bit of superstition, perhaps?

Here’s my review of the 2010 sign:

Large text that conveys only the basic information needed, nice contrasting typefaces (with the top one lending an air of liveliness to the sign), a unique choice of complementary colors (including a subtle gradient on the bottom half), and good balance in the design between the top half, the bottom half, and the white border. But what really takes this design from good to great is the stand of wheat to the right: it adds visual interest, ties back to the official Howard County seal, and evokes the rural past of the country in a way calculated to appeal both to conservative older residents and more liberal newcomers concerned about environmental issues. This one got my vote for the best Howard County campaign sign of 2010.

The new sign adds her first name (in the same case and typeface as her last name) but otherwise retains the virtues of the 2010 sign, with one exception: I think the white border on this sign is too wide, especially at the top.

I think the typeface on this sign is too thin, and the Maryland flag design element on the right may be too subtle, but this sign has a problem that has nothing to do with the design itself: Apparently the material of which the sign is made is so thin/transparent that parts of the other side of the sign show through in reverse. It’s both disconcerting and makes the sign less readable.

This is the classic “chalk on blackboard” theme for a sign for a Board of Education race, a design last used by Bob Ballinger in the 2010 election, if I remember right. This version is a bit busier than Ballinger’s, mainly due to the slogan at the bottom, but otherwise it’s a good example of this particular type of sign, legible with an attractive color.

I’m not a big fan of slogans on campaign signs, but I have to admit that “best in class” is a good pun. I also like the little mortarboard design element taking the place of the “i” in “Anita.”

Note that on Facebook Anita Pandey pointed me to an alternate design for this sign. I couldn’t see it too well because the image was small, but it looked like the alternate version replaced the “i” in “Anita” with a more extensive design element that combines a scroll (representing a diploma, presumably) and mortarboard, both drawn in a more cartooney fashion. In my opinion the original version is preferable; its version of the mortarboard design element is more subtle and doesn’t pull focus from the candidate’s name.

I’ve now commented on 29 signs out of a total of almost sixty for which I have pictures. Hopefully it will be all downhill from here. Check Twitter and Facebook for the next article, and don’t forget to vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I continue my look at 2018 campaign signs in Howard County with signs from Melanie Harris, Janet Siddiqui, Shahan Rizvi, Reid Novotny, Scott Berkowitz, Deb Jung, Larry Pretlow, Vicky Cutroneo, Raj Kathuria, and Jim Walsh.

No rest for the weary, as I continue looking at 2018 campaign signs for local Howard County races. (“Local” here means not statewide and not for Federal positions.) This time I step up the pace a tiny bit and review ten different signs, again in random order. For more on this series see part 1.

This is a reasonable looking sign, albeit somewhat dense and crowded in terms of the amount of information it tries to fit in. However the candidate’s name is quite readable, and the sign makes it clear what office she’s running for. Though busy the design is also relatively clean, with good use of the Maryland flag and some variation in the typefaces across the multiple lines of text.

Regarding the amount of information, I can see in a way why she included her website name on the sign: “Melanie Harris” is a fairly common name, and an Internet search for it returns a lot of irrelevant results. Also, the obvious website choice of “melanieharris.com” seems to be taken by someone else, with the site not even loading properly. Thus presumably the desire to highlight the candidate’s website “harrisinthehouse.com”—which I admit is a clever domain name.

But was it necessary to add a slogan too? One point to note is that the slogan is somewhat at odds with the sign design: “Smaller Government” is of course a standard Republican slogan, but the sign colors are green and white, colors traditionally associated with Democrats. I can’t help thinking this sign would have been more internally consistent in its messaging if it were in red, white, and blue.

Another example of a candidate, or more precisely, the candidate’s family, having a favorite color: orange was also prominently featured in Nayab Siddiqui’s 2014 sign, although in his case it was orange with black rather than orange with blue (as here).

This sign uses a particularly bright orange that really stands out. The white outlines around the letters in ”Siddiqui” also helps readability, as can be easily seen if you compare them to the letters in “County Council”. The text of ”Janet” and “Siddiqui” is in a good bold serif typeface that makes an impact without being too chunky. Unfortunately the text for “County Council” doesn’t quite go with it; I’m not sure if it’s the typeface, the lack of outlining, or the use of blue for the text color. (Would white have been better?)

Finally, why include the “M.D.” under Siddiqui? I can see this for a Board of Education race, but would anyone voting for a County Council candidate really care that Janet Siddiqui is a physician?

This is the first of several examples of a phenomenon I don’t recall seeing in 2014: campaign signs for Central Committee candidates. (Or, to be more specific, male Democratic Central Committee candidates; I haven’t seen any signs for female Democratic Central Committee candidates, nor for Republican Central Committee candidates.) I find it interesting that Shahan Rizvi would undertake the expense of making campaign signs, especially given that he’s a member of the “HoCo Forward” slate, and thus would presumably benefit from any promotion of that slate.

As for the sign itself, the colors are attractive, and the main thing is that the name “Rizvi” is both prominent and legible. However the typeface for “Shahan” seems a bit thin in comparison, as does the typeface used for the website name. In fact, the website name isn’t really all that readable. I wonder if it would have worked better in lower case.

Finally, the little cartoon is cute and lends an air of whimsy to the sign, but including two of them almost makes me think Rizvi is running as a pair of twins.

This is a solid sign—which is good, since Reid Novotny seems intent on plastering my section of Route 40 with these. The overall blue and white scheme has good contrast, and the spot of red in the upper left livens up the design and prevents it from being too monotone.

The typefaces are legible, and I like the strategy of placing “Reid” in the space opened up by the capital “N”. It’s mirrored by the design element with the star, which not only helps separate “Novotny” from “State Senate” but also fills the space opened up by the descender in the letter “y.”

Finally, since the design is pretty clean and uncluttered I don’t mind the addition of a slogan at the top. The slogan also helps contrast—in a relatively subtle way—Novotny’s candidacy from that of his primary opponent, incumbent Gail Bates.

Here’s another example of a campaign sign for the Democratic Central Committee race—and for another member of the HoCo Forward slate. It’s an attractive sign, with good legibility for the last name and a nice shade of blue.

But again I have to ask: Is it really necessary to include the fact that you’re a doctor, especially for a Central Committee race? I wouldn’t be so down on this except that I think the “MD” in small letters throws off the rest of the design.

There are a lot of things to like about this sign, including the typeface used for the names, so I was wondering why I found it a bit offputting. Then I figured it out: there’s no white border around the sign. Maybe it’s just me, but I find including a border helps frame the sign and highlight its content.

I have to admit, my first thought upon seeing this sign was, “Who is Larry?” Then I saw the slogan “Break the Slate!” and thought, “Oh, maybe this has to do with the Central Committee election and the HoCo Forward slate.” But I couldn’t remember seeing any Larrys on the ballot when I voted last Sunday. Then I looked more closely and saw “for Delegate” and the “13” on the donkey’s shirt, and finally figured it out: he’s running against the candidates of “Team 13.”

This is not really Larry Pretlow’s fault: I completely missed the “for Delegate” part in the lower part of the sign, which is in a larger font size than the “Break the Slate”. But it does illustrate the potential for confusion when voters see signs that don’t include all the relevant information about a candidate. (Before anyone comments, I’m aware that Krish Vignarajah also has signs that read simply “Krish for Maryland”. But as a gubernatorial candidate she has a higher media profile and thus presumably better name recognition.)

Sorry about the detour, now back to the sign itself: First, it’s a somewhat unusual shape relative to other signs. Other than that it’s a perfectly good looking sign. Blue or black text on a white background makes for high contrast, and the typeface is readable. I’m not a big fan of cartoons on signs, but this one is perfectly fine and doesn’t overshadow the rest of the sign.

I do wonder though about including “June 26th” on the sign. It makes the sign more crowded and I’m not sure it adds anything: if you know who “Larry” is, wouldn’t you also know when to vote?

Things to like about this sign: It has good legibility and impact for the candidate’s name, and I like the contract between the sans serif typeface used for the name and the slab serif typeface used for “Board of Education”. I like the two colors and the division of the sign’s area between them. I like including the endorsement logos within the sign itself, as opposed to slapping on stickers after the fact.

Things I don’t like: The two thin horizontal lines on either side of “Vicky” I think are necessary, but I’m not persuaded that it was necessary to include a similar thin line below “Cutroneo,” especially since there’s already a white area dividing that section of the sign from the lower part. I tried editing out the bottom line in an image editor and I think the sign looks better and (dare I say) more impactful without it.

Finally, it bothers me that the “Teacher Recommended” and “Ethics Star” logos aren’t quite at the same height. (Yes, I’m picky.)

This sign seems overly dark to me, with all white text against colored backgrounds. It also doesn’t help that the red is a relatively dark red. (Raj Kathuria may want to look to fellow Republican Warren Miller, whose signs have really good shades of red and blue.) Otherwise the sign has good legibility for the candidate’s name, but seems overly crowded with the secondary text at the top and bottom.

Finally, I could take or leave the little star-in-circle design elements used in dotting the “j” and “i”. I used my trusty image editor to change those elements to plain white circles; I think the sign looks quite fine without the stars.

This is far from being a bad sign, but I feel compelled to nitpick it a bit: The typeface for “Walsh” is bold, perhaps too bold: I feel the letters run together a bit too much, in a way that threatens to impair readability.

Also, I’m curious about the design elements in the lower left. The element that looks like two stalks of wheat is defensible enough: assuming that it is supposed to represent stalks of wheat, it’s a symbol of Howard County (especially the farms of Council District 5) and echoes similar elements on past signs for Courtney Watson and Bob Flanagan (among others). But what’s a set of scales doing on this sign? Walsh is running for County Council, not for Judge of the Orphans’ Court.

That’s it for today’s crop of signs. Keep an eye out on Twitter and Facebook for the next crop. In the meantime, vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article. If I get enough votes I’ll have a final runoff to determine the winner among all signs; otherwise you’ll just have to accept my choice.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I take a look at 2018 campaign signs in Howard County. This first post features signs from Jon Weinstein, Dan Medinger, Mavourene Robinson, Greg Jennings, Leslie Smith Turner, Bob Glascock, Jen Mallo, Terry McAndrews, and Kim Oldham.

One of my interests is graphic design—not that I have any talent for it myself—and one of the ways I’ve manifested that interest is in critiquing political campaign signs. I did a delayed retrospective on 2010 campaign signs, and then later did a more full discussion of as many 2014 campaign signs as I could track down.

I had thought I’d take a break this year, especially since I’m doing a series of political posts that are much more time-intensive. However in going this weekend to vote at the Miller Branch library, the array of signs was so impressive that I couldn’t stop myself from taking pictures of all of them. And what’s the use of taking pictures if I don’t do anything with them?

So without first ado here’s the first post in a series that I hope I can complete by the time (primary) election day rolls around. Rather than organizing the signs by race I’m posting them in a random order, just to mix things up.

I’ve previously outlined the criteria I use in judging signs, but I’ll briefly summarize them here once more:

• Legibility, especially at a distance from a moving car.
• Including the most important information: the candidate’s name and the office sought.
• Attractive colors that don’t clash or impede legibility.
• Clean, professional typography that adds an extra “oomph” to the sign’s visual appearance.
• Effective use of other design elements to enhance the impact of the sign, not detract from it.

I will say that local candidates have upped their game this year in the sign department: I’ve seen fewer things I consider to be basic mistakes, and a higher percentage of pretty good-looking signs.

And with that, let’s look at some signs!

Based on his 2014 campaign signs there are three things I’ve noticed about Jon Weinstein: He likes blue, white, and yellow, he likes little stars, and he likes to promote his web site.

He’s continuing those themes in 2018, as you can see above, though with a twist: where the 2014 signs used white and yellow text on a blue background, the 2018 signs use yellow and blue on a white background.

The main knock I have against the 2018 sign is that it looks fairly crowded and busy with all the design elements and the website name. The yellow horizontal lines and the line of blue stars help to separate the textual elements, but they also make the sign very dense. There’s also not much variation in the typography to lighten the density: same typeface throughout and mostly all upper case except for the website name.

Like Jon Weinstein, Dan Medinger has his favorite colors, in this case green and white, the same as those used on his 2014 sign. I wrote of that sign that it was “competent and unexceptionable,” and I think that’s true of this sign as well. There’s really not a whole lot more I can say about it.

One interesting aspect of campaign signs is that a sign can be perfectly effective in promoting the candidate while not being all that elegant from a design standpoint. This sign for Mavourene Robinson is a good example of that: The yellow on blue and blue on yellow stands out well and has good contrast for readability; in fact, the “Robinson” almost bores its way into your brain.

On the down side, I’m not that fond of the blue and yellow color combination, and design-wise there’s nothing particular interesting about the sign: just a basic horizontal yellow/blue/yellow division of the background, and a simple mixing up of the typefaces for variety: mixed upper and lower case sans serif in the slogan, mixed upper and lower case italic serif in “Mavourene,” all upper case san serif in “Robinson,” and then back to mixed upper and lower case sans serif for “Board of Education.”

The bottom line: while this sign won’t win any design awards, it gets the job done.

Here’s an example of the opposite phenomenon to what I just discussed: a sign that is quite elegant from a design perspective, but has I think one significant problem as a campaign sign: The “Democrat for County Council” text is not much larger than the authority line at the bottom, and I suspect it will not be that readable from a distance or when driving by.

Otherwise this sign is a winner: The typography is quite nice, and the white on blue contrast for “Jennings” makes it stand out well, while the orange on blue text for “Greg” is a nice combination that’s pleasing to the eye. Two other little touches I really liked: the contrasting orange/italic/serif type for the word “for,” and the “wave” design element below that line. Those are the kinds of things that from a design perspective take a good sign and make it great.

As far as I can tell this is the exact same sign Leslie Smith Turner used in the 2014 campaign, so I’ll just repeat my previous comments:

This sign does a nice job of highlighting the candidate’s last name and the position being sought; it also highlights the fact that she’s an incumbent, which many voters might not know given that this is a relatively obscure courthouse race. I’m less enthusiastic about the burgundy color used for the text, and I’m not a big fan of the script used for “Re-Elect Judge.”

This is a good but not great sign, in my opinion: The candidate’s last name is quite readable, but his first name looks too small compared to the last name and (especially) the “Vote” design element. I think it might have looked better just omitting the first name and making the “Vote” element slightly larger. I’m also not overly fond of the typography: I think having three pieces of text in a serif typeface and italics is a tad monotonous.

The main problem I have with this sign is that “HCPSS Board of Ed” seems both awkwardly worded and a bit small and hard to read. The word “Board” in particular looks like the letter spacing is a bit too wide, with the “B” and “A” needing to be a bit closer to the “O.”

Otherwise the sign has no major problems. I do find the choice of red, white, and blue a bit odd though for a Board of Education race, as that color scheme is mostly used for partisan races, and in particular is a favorite of Republican candidates. Is this the design equivalent of a dog whistle? (I have no idea what Jen Mallo’s party affiliation is.) (UPDATE: Jen Mallo emailed me to say that the color choice was made by the graphic designer and that no dog whistle was intended.)

This sign, like some others past and present, tries to enliven the design by doing more interesting things with the sign background. That goal is accomplished here, with the only downside being that the actual sign part of the sign (that is, the part with the candidate’s name and office sought) seems like it’s just a smaller (and thus less visually prominent) sign within a sign.

Also, using mixed upper and lower case serif text is an unusual choice for the candidate’s name, most signs use all upper case sans serif for that. That choice may have been made because “McAndrews” is in CamelCase (as the programmers say) and doesn’t seem to read as well in all caps as “MCANDREWS.”

Every election year there are one or two signs that stand out from the pack and make me stop and do a double-take. Kim Oldham’s sign is one of those this year. (There seems to be something about the State’s Attorney races that brings out good sign design; Dario Brocollino’s sign was a standout in 2014.) The bold white type on a yellow background really pops out, and the design element at the top based on the Maryland flag is done quite well. The red text reading “State’s Attorney” is just a tad small for maximum readability, but I think it’s balanced nicely with the larger text of the name.

One interesting design decision was to place the first name “Kim” at the left rather than centering it above “Oldham”. I actually tried my hand at changing the design in an image editor, and found it’s a tough call as to whether left justification or centering looks better. What swayed me toward left justification is that there’s a slight asymmetry in the Maryland flag design element at the top, caused by keeping the yellow and black bars of equal width. Putting “Kim” to the left seems to balance off the asymmetry a bit.

That’s it for today’s group of signs. More critiques should be coming your way soon in part 2. In the meantime I’m trying something new by giving you the opportunity to vote on your favorite signs, starting with this first group: just click on the link to the part 1 SurveyMonkey survey and then pick which of the signs above you like best. It’s completely anonymous.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.