I’m not sure why the logo appears in both sites.

There is no logo that appears on both sites. They both use red and white stripes -- as in the American flag -- and a sky blue backdrop with some vague sun ray pattern.

I think the confusion is that, in the screencap above that HuffPo used, it may appear that the second appearance of the Obama circular logo is on McCain's site. It's not. That's still Obama's site, below the top navigation menu.

you think the fault lies in McCain’s web designer

If a web designer can publish live without any kind of pre-prod approval process or release management, than McCain's internet operation is indeed hackey. Even if a designer created the problem, there should be approval layers in place to prevent it from becoming public.

I do not know if this is the case. There is also copyright issues related to the logo that we are not informed about. Does Obama hold a trademark? Does someone else? If either campaign holds a mark, I would expect a rapid cease and desist demand from that candidates legal team to the opposing party.

Designing is an art and to pretend that everyone likes doing it the same way is asinine.

What one likes has nothing to do with it. There are established best practices related to logo usage, you either follow them or not...

Which sounds like you think Obama web designer is of high caliber if not directly then indirectly. Unless you don’t think his organization is of low caliber but that wouldn’t make much sense. Now if you think someone of high caliber wouldn’t use a template then they wouldn’t steal a logo either. This would mean that you think the fault lies in McCain’s web designer and that they are of low caliber.

I’m not sure why the logo appears in both sites. Maybe McCain’s designer did steal it for some unknown reason or maybe it is one of many other reasons. Both sides often use the same pollsters and caterers, maybe the use the same web designers. I have seen some companies that like putting little identifiers logo on pages they design. I not a believer in it myself but it happens. Designing is an art and to pretend that everyone likes doing it the same way is asinine.

Which sounds like you think Obama web designer is of high caliber if not directly then indirectly. Unless you don’t think his organization is of high caliber but that wouldn’t make much sense. Now if you think someone of high caliber wouldn’t use a template then they wouldn’t steal a logo either. This would mean that you think the fault lies in McCain’s web designer and that they are of low caliber.

I’m not sure why the logo appears in both sites. Maybe McCain’s designer did steal it for some unknown reason or maybe it is one of many other reasons. Both sides often use the same pollsters and caterers, maybe the use the same web designers. I have seen some companies that like putting little identifiers logo on pages they design. I not a believer in it myself but it happens. Designing is an art and to pretend that everyone likes doing it the same way is asinine.

Maybe the same designer or Design Company did both pages

The chances of this are just about zero.

I wonder why you assumed Obama web designer is of high caliber and not McCain’s.

Where did I say that?

Don't know anything about McCain's organization. There is a strong chance that Obama's team includes veterans of Dean's campaign. Dean's people pretty much wrote the book on how to use the Internet in a political campaign, and Obama's team has perfected it.

The right is playing catch up when it comes to using the Internet. They probably never going to catch up as most of the the people who are on the cutting edge of web technology and implementation are those darned liberals...

BTW I do not feel that the "copying" issue as presented here is valid.

However the logos got there is due to the web designer not the candidate. Maybe the same designer or Design Company did both pages. I don’t know a neither do you. I agree it is not something a professional designer should do, especially if all they do is web design. In the real world many web pages are done by people who do other jobs and they unfortunately take shortcuts. I receive offers to buy premade web components quite often. I prefer to go the original route but know others who do not. I can’t rightly call them thieves if they buy it or get it from a share site and I sure can’t call their customers thieves.

I wonder why you assumed Obama web designer is of high caliber and not McCain’s. Unless you think O.B. is a serious project and J.M. is not. In the end it is the designer or designers fault.

But Obama doesn't have any real ideas to steal.

On the other hand, I'd give kudos to any candidate who had the audacity to make his site colors purple and green.....

Before Obama or B.O. as I prefer to call it.., no one had ever thought of placing the words "we" and "can" together. It took a person of major intellect to see that.

B.O... no one had ever thought of using the colors red, white and blue in a stripey type formation.

B.O. went into a trance and emerged with these solutions, just like he will with healthcare.

If you think an orginazation the caliber of Obama's pulled its logo off of a template, it is a pretty good indication that you have never been involved in any kind of a serious project...

Of course templates exist, and perhaps people such as yourself use them. I prefer to use my own designs, which I have done for Fortune 500 companies, Grammy winners, Emmy winners and multi- platinum record producers.

When a logo shows up in 2 different places, it generally is a matter of someone with little or no design skills ripping off someone who can actually do original work. I have certainly been ripped off before, perhaps by you :)

The logos were probably taken from the same web design template.

Wayne clearly you know absolutely nothing about web design.

This reminds me of all the claimed speech lines stealing here a while back. They claim McCain stole a line then found out later he was using it long before Obama ever did.

If this is the best discussion we can come up this early in the election cycle it is obvious that this election will elevate useless hyperbole and whining to a new level. So glad to see our future in such good hands.