HOWARD UNIVERSITY Typeface Persona: Investigating Gotham’s Suitability for Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of HOWARD UNIVERSITY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Mass Communication & Media Studies by Miriam M. Ahmed Washington, D.C. December 2013 HOWARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL DEPARTMENT OF MASS COMMUNICATION & MEDIA STUDIES DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ___________________________________________ Anthony McEachern, Ph.D. Chairperson ___________________________________________ Melbourne Cummings, Ph.D. ___________________________________________ Barbara Hines, Ph.D. ___________________________________________ Clint Wilson II, Ed.D. ___________________________________________ Deen Freelon, Ph.D. Assistant Professor School of Communication American University Washington, D.C. ____________________________________________ Barbara Hines, Ph.D. Dissertation Advisor Candidate: Miriam M. Ahmed Defense Date: November 26, 2013 ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to Del Harrod for inspiring my passion for typography. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to God, my family, friends, colleagues and mentors for the endless sustenance, support and guidance. iv ABSTRACT The Gotham typeface received widespread media acclaim during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Creative professionals and critics described the typeface as having inherent personality attributes such as elegant, nostalgic, all-American and contemporary. Some claimed that Gotham was the perfect typeface for Obama’s campaign. This dissertation was a 2- part, mixed-methods study that first quantitatively investigated the actual persona of Gotham as perceived by a convenience sample, and subsequently qualitatively determined if that perceived persona matched the persona of verbal rhetoric set in Gotham in a sample of official campaign advertisements. The results showed that the sample’s perception of Gotham did not match the creative professionals’ perception. Instead, the sample generally described Gotham as somewhat most of the persona attributes tested. The survey findings corresponded with the literature review of investigations into Obama's verbal rhetoric which described Obama’s rhetoric as vague, adaptable and indecisive. This indicated that, at least for the convenience sample, the Gotham typeface was actually quite appropriate for the Obama campaign since the typeface was viewed as having the same adaptable persona suitable for multiple occasions, much like Obama’s rhetorical style. The participants also labeled Gotham as very familiar, legible, plain and straightforward. These last four attributes were matched with the verbal rhetoric set in Gotham in the campaign ads. In other words, the rhetorical message conveyed by the visual design of the typeface corresponded to the rhetorical message of the verbal text in Obama’s campaign ads. This researcher concluded that Gotham was actually an ideal typeface for Obama. These findings should encourage future political candidates to utilize tailored, visual, typographic strategies for their campaigns and should encourage further research into typography in political communication. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ............................................................................................... ii DEDICATION.............................................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 Overview ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Researcher’s Interest in the Problem ........................................................................................... 3 Introduction to Gotham ............................................................................................................... 5 Development of Gotham ....................................................................................................................... 5 Characteristics of Gotham ..................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 2: STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ............................................................... 16 Problem Investigated ................................................................................................................. 16 Historical Background............................................................................................................... 17 Goals of the Investigation ......................................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 23 Gestalt Theory, Information Processing Theories and Models of Reading .............................. 23 Nonverbal Communication ....................................................................................................... 25 Visual Communication .............................................................................................................. 26 Typography ............................................................................................................................... 31 Investigations into Type Persona .............................................................................................. 35 Nonverbal Visual Communication in Political Campaigns ...................................................... 43 Media Buzz around Obama’s Visually-Strategic Campaign .................................................... 58 Examinations of Obama’s Verbal Rhetoric .............................................................................. 62 vi CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................ 80 What was Examined .................................................................................................................. 80 Research Questions ................................................................................................................... 80 Operational Definitions ............................................................................................................. 80 Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 81 Overview ............................................................................................................................................. 81 Data Collection ................................................................................................................................... 82 Instrumentation ................................................................................................................................... 83 Analytical Procedures ......................................................................................................................... 87 CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS .......................................................................................................... 96 Survey Findings......................................................................................................................... 96 Entire Sample ...................................................................................................................................... 96 Age Differences .................................................................................................................................. 97 Gender Differences ............................................................................................................................. 99 Ethnicity/Race Differences ............................................................................................................... 100 Political Party Differences ................................................................................................................ 101 Verbal Rhetoric in Print Ads ................................................................................................... 102 Event Details and Website Addresses ............................................................................................... 102 Sponsor Information ......................................................................................................................... 103 Taglines or Catch Phrases and Calls to Action or Directives ........................................................... 104 Speech Excerpt .................................................................................................................................. 106 Visual Rhetoric ................................................................................................................................