We all know Sarah Palin’s wink now, either from the self-declared maverick’s VP debate, or from Tina Fey’s brilliant portrayal on Saturday Night Live.

Tonight’s the evening for Obama’s 30-minute campaign ad, and here is probably the best ad from either campaign yet.

The simplicity of going with no voice over, and just music and text instead, gives power and a sense of importance to the ad as a whole. Plus, if there was a voice over, the inflection and tone of the voice might make the ad feel either too negative, or too monotone.

Even if you don’t read the three McCainn quotes the ad starts with, the one screen — “His Choice?” — followed by that infamous wink, well, that just sums it all up perfectly.

Watch the ad on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eUz13-pmTY
(sorry, embedding on my blog is kind of messed up right now)

Yahoo! is doing a major homepage redesign, and here’s a screen cap I came across. Notice how clean and simplified it looks — with very clear sections for different types of user tasks and functionality, and minimal content — it really prioritizes what’s important, and cuts out the clutter. IMHO, this gives Google a competitive reason to redesign their page which now links to dozens of apps and services, but has been the same since like… 1901??

Here’s a blog post from Yahoo! with some more info.

Talk is cheap in any medium. You can’t just say you’re there to help your customers and not back it up with well-designed functionality on your site that provides real value.

And so when Obama’s website recently added a Tax Calculator to show how much people will save under his plan, I had to post about it:

Simple tools like these back up the talking points and campaign messaging with personalization and interactivity that aids understanding. A little functionality goes a long way, for Obama, or for any brand.