A friend of mine alerted me to a logo design contest for a website called libertarianism.org. Can’t say I’ve ever been there, but the contest grabbed my attention so I checked it out.
One of the rules is, “We do not want anything that ties the mark to a specific country. So no American flags or eagles, no Statue of Liberty, etc. And, please, no torches.” If you can’t help but chuckle a little because that rule makes sense, then you too, understand the awesome power of imagery and visual vocabulary; The deepness of the associations created with imagery by humans is amazing. Taking art history classes in college really drilled this fact into me.
It’s nice to be reminded every once in a while of how difficult it to divorce certain things from certain sets of imagery. For me, the ability to do such a thing is very nice to have. I am reminded every once in a while how inseparable certain things are from a certain visual vocabulary and how intense the associations can be in the thoughts of other people, how deeply indoctrinated people are, to see certain images in their thoughts when they think of a certain concept.