PNM manifesto reviewed, aesthetically that is!

Let's start with the cover. It's red. Which is what you would expect, red being one of the national colours, a PNM colour and also colour linked with love, which is at the heart of the PNM campaign this year (pun intended). But there is something sedate about this cover. It suggests stability, possibly. But is also open to being accused of being inert. Also, for a campaign focused on how much the party cares, the cover, as well as sections inside of the manifesto, have surprisingly few images of people. It's all about the boats, buses and NAPA. The font is classy, yet functional. But why that grey stripe? Grey suggests an area of uncertainty, amidst bold black bars and, arguably, undercuts the message of certainty/stability. But voters probably don't care about these things, of course.

This PTSC bus just happened to be parked in front of the controversial National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) and was photographed for use in the section of the manifesto on works and transport. A bit snarky. Another picture of the inside of NAPA also appears early on in the document. It's very dramatic, but unfortunately it reminds people of the Artists Coalition of TT dossier prepared by Rubadiri Victor which lamented the flaws in the design of NAPA and the lack of consultation:

There are some interesting pages where care was taken to arrange the text in unconventional ways for a manifesto. Normally manifestos can be quite staid, but this one tried its hand at some spunkiness (but not too much--it is politics after all and you have to linger near the centre!) The result? Some pages that trigger your attention but are actually a little difficult to digest in the context of the function of a manifesto, which is normally about the way forward and a clear motion of turning  page after page smoothly. But kudos for this kind of effort at least.

We also have the odd mood images like this one which appears to want to suggest wealth, power, energy. But might just be looked upon as boring. And dark:

This one, near the end, was more effective:

It all ends with, you guessed it, more red:

All in all, this was a good effort, with a few mis-steps. Three and a half out of five stars. But what do you think? SEE the entire PNM manifesto here. We await the UNC/COP manifesto which is scheduled to appear later this week.