As the primaries fast approach, presidential hopefuls are unveiling their official campaign logos, and let's speak plainly. Whether the logo is an "H" that functions as a sort of political Rorschach test; a logo that looks like it was just plucked from the side of the pyramid HQ of a dystopian mega-corporation in Blade Runner; or the exclamatory wordmark of a country-fried bumpkin who seems surprised that he's running for president, the logos we've seen so far leave us mostly underwhelmed.
We felt sorry for the design-blind politicians who are all vying to be our next president, so we decided to help. We turned to the most prolific logo designer in the world, Christophe Szpajdel, to create entirely new identities for 11 presidential hopefuls, ranging from Jeb Bush to Bernie Sanders. A professional logo designer since 1977, Szpadjel has spent the past 40 years distilling the complex socio-political platforms of over 7,000 black metal bands like Fistula, Arcturus, Old Man's Child, and Moonspell down to single, indelible wordmarks— albeit ones that usually contain a bloody Pentagram or an upside down cross somewhere in the design. Here's what he came up with (side-by-side comparisons below, unadulterated metal versions above).
Jeb Bush
Bush's 2016 presidential logo is notable for the fact that it doesn't include his family name. Szpajdel takes a different approach and makes the thorny branches of a Bush part of the design. Each one drips blood, but Szpajdel didn't discard everything from Jeb's existing logo: a surprised exclamation point hovers above the rest of the wordmark.
Lincoln Chafee
If you sort of blur your eyes, Democrat Lincoln Chafee's new logo sort of looks like the Batman symbol, albeit for a Batman who turned into Dracula somewhere down the line.
Hillary Clinton
In Szpajdel's design, Hillary Clinton's "H"—which naysayers derided for pointing to the right—inspires a new logo in which razor sharp arrows pierce her name from both the left and the right. Meanwhile, the "H" itself almost serves as a sort of daemonic glyph, the kind of thing you might find scratched on the basement walls at the end of the Blair Witch Project.
Ted Cruz
In real life, Ted Cruz is a southern baptist, so Szpajdel incorporates a celtic cross into his logo as a nod to the candidate's faith. Szpajdel also references the Texas senator's go-to facial expression in the blank moon of his logo's "C."
Carly Fiorina
The name of ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina has been turned into an imposing, Vlad-the-Impaler-style spike: appropriately enough, the sort of things you'd just hate to get shoved up your ass for four years.
Mike Huckabee
The slogan for Mike Huckabee's 2016 presidential campaign is: "From hope to higher ground." Szpajdel imagines this higher ground as a mountain, completely undermined by a network of underground fissures leading straight to hell, spelling out Huckabee's name.
Rand Paul
Rand Paul's 2016 presidential logo already looked like something peeled off Al Pacino's stationery from The Devil's Advocate, so honestly, Szpajdel didn't have to do much to draw out the Satanism.
Rick Perry
Please rise for our next president, the diabolical goat man, Rick Perry! Hail Lucifer!
Marco Rubio
In Marco Rubio's widely lampooned presidential logo, all of America is reduced to a single dot above the "i" in his last name. But why stop there? Szpadjel covers the Rubio logo in dots like an outbreak of Rubella—or, should we say, Rubio-ella? (Not that he's likely to get it himself: Rubio believes in vaccination, even if his constituency doesn't.)
Bernie Sanders
Ah, Bernie. He's the candidate least likely to sell America's soul to Beelzebub, so Szpajdel didn't have much material to work with in his redesign. Instead, the Lord of Logos just tried to make Sanders look as bitching as possible.
Donald Trump
The biggest ass in the Republican party becomes an elephant's rear end. Perfection.