On the NYTimes.com Campaign Stops blog, design writer and critic Steven Heller asked several industry notables to weigh in on Sen. John McCain's choice of Optima for his campaign logo. (Actually, it's not like McCain himself actually chose the face.) Heller previously posted about Sen. Barack Obama's use of Gotham by Tobias Frere-Jones.

Read the whole post, which includes Seymour Chwast's curmudgeonly-in-kind-of-a-funny-way comments and Cyrus Highsmith's comparison of the campaign to his dentist. And then there's a fun bit from Matthew Carter, who goes so far as to set the names of potential VP candidates in Optima:

"The moment of typographic truth will come when Senator McCain picks a vice presidential running mate and two names have to be combined on banners and bumper stickers. By choosing Optima, a rather distinctive typeface, he may have seriously limited his options."

Carter notes that both Huckabee and Romney look a little silly in Optima, but that Rice fits the typeface quite nicely.