Trump’s Oval Office Sign – A Typography Breakdown

Trump’s latest White House “upgrade” includes a paper Oval Office sign. In this article and spontaneous video I’ll talk about the font choice, why it feels insecure rather than elegant, and what it says about the use of script fonts that want to pretend to be luxury.

Some background: If you caught last week’s photos from the White House Rose Garden, you might have spotted a curious little detail – a temporary paper sign outside the Oval Office, set in shiny gilded script. HuffPost asked me for thoughts on it. So here’s my analysis on why this sign feels so strange, and what it teaches us about design choices that over-promise and under-deliver.

The sign uses a gilded script font on a plain paper, a placeholder obviously, for something more permanent. And to me, this is the cheapest way to signal something is noble. It’s lush and golden, but it feels insecure, like trying a bit too hard. Think of a cheap chocolate brand using a shiny font to look luxurious or a low-budget hotel conference room that is going for grandeur but lands on kitsch.

It is also reminiscent of the Mar-a-Lago font, while it is not that exact one. But it’s a style that often appears in Trump-branded stuff. So