Michon Blog

As discussed in an earlier blog post, this election will be contested across many new platforms including the televised debates and online but one of the areas that is traditionally a very important part of the campaign process is the Party Election Manifesto.

All the major parties have manifestos describing their policies, values and beliefs available as both a printed document and downloadable from their websites as a pdf. But which ones are the most effective, from a graphic design point of view? With less than a week to go before the nation goes to the polls, here are some thoughts from the design studio here at Michon:

Conservatives

“I really like the style of the illustration but it doesn’t match the overall layout and type”

“Modern, clean graphics made charts and diagrams easy to understand”

“Too much information to wade through!”

“Appalling cover smacks of 1950′s school text book”

“All text seems to be set in bold, format is testing to read”

“Eye catching illustrations”

“Not very inspiring but looks like a document to be taken seriously”

Labour Party

“looks like a California Raisins ad on the cover”

“Is the most colourful”

“Nice illustration but does make me think it is WWII”

“Slightly better use of font and colour coding”

“Use of sans serif fonts clashes with serif font”

“Cover is modern and dated at the same time”

Liberal Democrats

“It’s quite understated but the colours are positive and it looks professional.”

“Modern feel with brighter colours and lighter font weight”

“Easy to read, much better use of bullet points and book/bold balance”

“Looks like a one man band as the vast majority of pics are of the leader”

“Some cheesy stock pictures are used”

“Design is a bit too light and airy and lacks gravitas, feels like a supermarket’s annual report”

Green Party

“Clean design and easy on the eye”

“the only one to break from the A4 format”

“No pictures or illus to break up the design – just text, text, text”

“Looks like the first or second draft with no budget”

“Very pretty”

“I hope they print on 100% recycled stock!”

UKIP

“cheap and cliche-riddled”

“design made me laugh”

“Fairly clean layout”

“Felt like I was reading through an insurance brochure from the 1980s”

“Oh my, looks like advert from Poundland / local village mag.”

So, some varied responses there to the diverse approaches taken by the major parties. Some faired better than others but it doesn’t look like any will be winning design awards this year!

Let’s see how the results reflect the materials that are out there for all to see.

Rich

More than any election in the past, the 2010 General Election will be fought across an ever-widening range of media including the first ever televised debates.

Interestingly, all 3 major parties are using Facebook, YouTube and Twitter alongside their main websites to help spread their message. But who is leading the way online?

We’ve had a look at each of the 3 major parties to see who is leading the way online. We’ve looked at each online element purely focussing on the number of followers, pagerank or views. There are no subjective assessments here, it’s all based on cold, hard numbers…

Conclusions

As a whole, the Conservatives are definitely leading the way with a more visible website and more Facebook and Twitter followers than their competition although they are led by Labour on YouTube. The Lib Dems are behind in all areas apart from outperforming Labour on Facebook.

Regardless of who is leading and who eventually wins the election, it is really interesting to see that all the major parties are embracing social media as a way to engage their audience and spread their message more directly. As we get closer to the election itself I can only anticipate that this activity will increase even further.

We’ll be watching closely.

Rich