In the US you have New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami and dozens of other cities; a few of them have a really strong visual character. But even with those there is just too much space between them and too many people.

Certain kinds of typeface design and typographic design are designed to persuade: we can make this company look modern if we use a crisp sans serif typeface, or we can make this restaurant look like its been around forever if we use typefaces and layout styles that have been around forever too. But there are other categories, and ballot design is one of them, where the goal should be to be purely functional. There have been notable failures in this category.

The problem contains the solution.

I'm always conscious of the context, the history, the specific environment of anything that I design and what it is going to be operating within.

A lot of times, you design a logo to be timeless, but with something like the Olympics, timelessness is maybe not something you should be going for.

Everyone can have an opinion on a logo.

Part of maturing as a designer is discovering what you're good at.