Designing the Electoral Map

After a divided election like 2004, it's tempting to think that we live in an extremely polarized country comprised of red states and blue states. Graphic design is supposed to simplify complex issues into comprehensible terms, but have we fallen into a trap by embracing a 2-sizes-fits-all graphic design matrix? Kurt Andersen and graphic designer Paula Scher, who designed the best-seller America The Book, explore the grey areas, or at least the purple areas.

Kurt Andersen: Like a lot of people during the last couple of weeks, I spent way more time than was probably good for me staring at maps of the United States—maps all divided into blue states and red states.

Blue and red have become our very simple national shorthand for Democrat and Republican, shorthand for all the complexities of race and class and religion and history that underlie that basic binary electoral choice. Reducing complicated information to simple, comprehensible terms is one of the things that graphic design is supposed to do. But on election night as I watched states turn blue and red, I realized how far we've gone toward actually thinking of ourselves in these simple blue versus red terms. And I wondered, are we trapping ourselves in this two-sizes-fits-all graphic design box?

To try to figure out this design for the real world problem, I've invited into Studio 360 one of America's preeminent graphic designers, Paula Scher, who is a partner with the international firm Pentagram. Paula, welcome to Studio 360.

Paula Scher: Hi, how are you?

KA: I don't know about you, but even before blue and red, which only began four years ago, as the way we talk about this stuff, I am repelled by the tendency toward everything is either left or right. You're either this or that, that's it. And this seems to really make it concrete in a way that we now can't escape almost.

PS: Well, I think the states have truly been branded. They've been branded by color. And I think it happened accidentally, but I actually trace it back to the 80s, when Nancy Reagan always wore red. And it was actually called "Reagan red." And I think that it was a perfect symbol for Ronald Reagan's sort of Republicanism, because, you know, it sort of affected power, being militaristic, and was something probably the Republican party could hang its hat behind.

KA: And yet not many years before, and certainly in Ronald Reagan's coming of age, red meant something very different. It's funny that it switched as a brand from Commie to Republican.

PS: Well, it became smart when Commies ceased to be a threat. Blue on the other hand is actually a color that I'm asked to use a lot when I'm doing government work, because blue sort of can either affect an Ivy League feeling or it can be a peaceful color—it's the sky and the water, it sort of evokes peace. So if you're anti-government, then blue isn't a very good color, red is actually a better color.

KA: As we have these maps that we're faced with, and it's divided into states, but modern map-making technology allows granular divisions that we could be having. Because, I mean, even in the bluest state of all, a third of the people or more are reds. And in the reddest states, many people are blue. So as graphic designers, should you begin sort of saying, "No, no, no, let's figure out a new way to do this that reflects the nuances of reality better?"

PS: Well I suspect that the really more appropriate thing would be to do polka dots and stripes on the states as they're mixed, assuming that we're only dealing in two colors, which I assume is a cost-cutting measure. Otherwise you could actually define the states in terms of all forms of gray and all forms of pastels. Actually on some of the electoral maps they were I thought relatively innovative in making a barely Kerry state sort of a pale blue and then just a teeny bit of Kerry might have a blue outline and a white interior. So they actually got a little more innovative with it, it wasn't quite so red-blue, it did nuance a bit. I wonder if we want to define personalities; if we would want to define people that are merely religious conservatives as opposed to fiscal conservatives and assign them a specific color. And that would be a wonderful task for a graphic designer, we could color code the entire nation.

KA: If you were given the assignment as a designer to start over and do whatever you want to make this a comprehensible representation of our politics, what would you do?

PS: Well, I actually think what the map doesn't show is where the population is in terms of region. In other words, if you looked at areas of the map, you're talking about urban versus rural. And there's red and blue differentials within different states. And to me, it's not the amount of different colors, it's where they're emanating from, so you actually see a texture and a makeup of the country. So you know when you're talking about a population in a state, there are states that are carried by a specific candidate and they're assigned one color, when in fact they're really very much split in two, and it has to do where populations live. Now that to me is totally fascinating.

KA: So instead of regarding the border of Ohio, which was so important in this election, as paramount, you'd see southern Ohio was more the color of Kentucky and eastern Ohio was more the color of Pennsylvania.

PS: Absolutely, that's right. Or looking at Illinois, which turned up as a nice, big blue state, the fact of the matter is the blue is very heavily concentrated in one area, and you might find a great region of that state was really quite red. And it doesn't matter if it's red and blue or black and white or shades of gray. It's really to tell you what you're looking at, because the vastness of the red against the blue is actually an inaccuracy, and a total blue state is an inaccuracy.

KA: Paula Scher, thank you very much. Paula Scher is a partner at the design firm Pentagram and designed the Daily Show book, America.