Proposed logos for The Chris Christie Institute of Public Policy

Perhaps you’ve heard about our former Governor Chris Christie and his Institute of Public Policy at Seton Hall University. The news of this very strange collaboration broke last week, along with the explanation that it would exist to “promote civility in politics.” And that got us here at New Jersey Globe thinking what I’m sure so many of you out there immediately wondered: What would the logo for this new venture look like?

It used to be that if you wanted a logo, you’d have to either get creative yourself or hire a graphic designer. No more. Now, with the use of an online app (there are many to choose from) and a combination of AI and an algorithm that looks at the most popular and pleasing design elements, you can have a gorgeous, if a bit generic, logo in literally seconds. This is incredibly helpful for small businesses just starting out and absolutely devastating for artists that depend on income from designing things, but let’s put aside the ethics for a moment and see what some of those site suggest.

The first site I went to was Canva. I entered the name of the institute and what kind of business it was (a school), and was immediately given a slew of choices. Here’s a few of my favorites:

              

It’s a little jarring just how tasteful and professional these are, given that they took seconds to create. You could slap any of these on some promotional material and no one would blink an eye. They might be enough to inspire a kind of cognitive dissidence that leads you to think this institute could possibly be a good thing. But do they really capture the character, the person that is, Chris Christie?

Well, no. For a personality as big and as unique as Gov. Christie’s, it seems that we should have something that is less generic. Less slick. Didn’t voters initially respond to his no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is personality? Didn’t that quickly devolve into yelling and name-calling? Living through 2019 has destroyed my brain for anything that happened less than five minutes ago, but I swear that was a thing. And I would want to see that reflected in a logo for his institute, or really, what’s the point in splashing his name up there?.

I went on to another site.

Tailorbrands takes things a little further by allowing you to suggest a “mood” for your business, along with the name and business type. Easy enough: I went for the only mood I associate with the former Governor — “angry” — and entered everything else in.

It too spit out dozens of suggestions, but that’s the only one I really gravitated towards. Still, I felt like we were getting somewhere. I realized the key to using these sites: the app itself is dumb, so you have to teach it who Chris Christie is. It’s good at churning out middlebrow “good taste,” and bad at knowing the social implications.

Brandmark seemed promising because it allows you to enter in as many descriptors or moods as possible. Which is great in theory, but I really didn’t have that many words to describe the guy and I don’t honestly understand what on earth this institute is going to do. This is the best I could manage:

And here’s what I got:

       

 

Ok the formula here was [mean face] + [name of institute] but it’s not like the AI was all wrong. We’d fallen a bit into a pit of predictability, but overall I was liking the feel of these. Now just to take it further.

Looka started to get it right. It too allowed me to suggest multiple moods, and here we inevitably got closer to something that felt appropriate; our first breakthrough:

At last, the AI was getting what I wanted it to. I mean, that’s getting pretty close. I’d like it more if the hand were somehow in the shape of the state of NJ, but this is showing some real promise. The site also let me see what branded merchandise with the logo on it would look like, a plus:

Another option:

Ooh! Ok, we’re getting a bit into my own personal aesthetic here – not necessarily the “client’s” but… the buried text? The all-black everything? The feeling that you’re going to be knocked over the head and dragged to a secret location if you sign up for this thing? We’re really getting somewhere. This logo is starting to be less “public policy institute” and more “creepy, weird S&M cult involving being yelled at a lot” and, yes. Seems right.

I’d felt at that point that we’d probably gotten as far as we were going to go with online generators and were really at the point where a human artist had to get involved. And since I’m really the only artist I can tap, I made the following potential logo. (I should note that when an artist works with a client — as presumably I would be doing if this were a real logo for a real institute — the top consideration is always Make the client happy. And so here’s what I would submit, along with the text to accompany the pitch:

The Governor appears to us in Seton Hall blue, wearing a branded Seton Hall shirt. He seems Thor-like, wielding two thunderbolts, one in each hand. In his left hand is the bolt that represents Civility and in his right, Constructive Feedback – twin lightning strikes that are here to restore dignity and order to our political discourse, somehow. Lumbering through the DC skyline, he crushes buildings at his feet and zaps tourists with his lightning bolts, making them instantly more civil. “Goddamn it,” he declares, “we may not have much common ground anymore but at least we can be polite about it!” The font is classic Cinzel, separated by a bar with a grunge, splattered flair.

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I know, the middle finger one is the best. But do you have a logo you’d like to propose for The Chris Christie Institute of Public Policy? If so, tweet it at me at @amywilson. I’d love to see it!