POLITICS AND DESIGN
How Campaign Design Can Win a Presidency
In an era of images here’s how political campaigns are keeping up
American political campaign design and branding has long been dominated by the colors of the American flag — red, white, and blue. Following World War II, very few presidents and political campaigns incorporated colors outside of the traditional patriotic combinations. Only three political campaigns were an exception: the Chisholm, Jackson, and Carter’s campaigns.
The Obama logo was the primary symbol of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and quickly became the most recognized political campaign logos of the time. While the logo itself emphasized modernity, with its streamlined design and use of symbols, it still upheld the red, white, and blue color scheme.
In the next election cycle, Hillary Clinton announced her presidential bid with a new campaign logo design — a patriotic red, white, and blue “H” with an arrow pointing right at the center. Clinton’s presidential bid logo drastically shifted from her 2008 style, which had utilized a serif typeface and the imagery of the United State’s flag. Within a short span of years, there has been an accelerated consideration for modern design implementations when it came to launching a political campaign. The American population slowly grew accustomed to this modern take on campaign design, allowing candidates to present themselves outside of the red, white, and blue mold.
Data Archive and Congressional Campaigns
The 2018 election for the United States Congress was filled with exciting races. After the election, a group of designers were inspired to develop a database to keep track of campaign details and logos, with a focus on campaign branding, marketing, and design. A quick browse through the archive’s landing page shows a surprising variety of styles and colors— although it is clear that throughout the past +20 years— all campaigns project similar messages through design. Modernity in political design has been accepted, but when did we shift to introducing colors other than red, white, and blue?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC) congressional run in the 2018 midterm election primaries is widely known as causing the biggest upset victory to an incumbent Democrat in history. AOC’s run was then majorly televised not only because of the change she portrayed for the representation of the district, but also a noticeable introduction of design and color selection. The campaign’s influence on distinctive political campaign branding became known as “The AOC Effect.” AOC’s colors included purple, yellow, blue, and white. Using such distinguishable colors allowed AOC to step away from the Democratic Party “label”. Before AOC’s campaign, campaigns that introduced colors outside of the red, white, and blue mold generally preferred one or two colors that varied from the norm. AOC’s campaign was fearless in the sense that it did not only use uncommon colors, but she used many of them to create patterns and grids with the palette. From the beginning of AOC’s campaign, can see her style manipulation transform as her confidence grew in the race. Through the campaign, AOC was able to solidify her brand and as her re-election campaign surged in 2020, voters across the nation were excited to see her visuals.
2020 and Beyond
It is undeniable there is a considerable budget put aside for running presidential campaigns vs. down-ballot campaigns. Due to higher stakes (and resources), there has been a growing focus on design at the presidential level in campaigns, in hopes to differentiate each candidate.
According to experts, the 2020 cycle’s trend shifted from the traditional red or blue, expanding instead into a rainbow of colors to help each candidate define their distinct identity. Who would have thought that purple, hot pink, or gold could be colored representing the possible leader of the nation? In the 2020 presidential race, four mainstream women candidates decided to break the red, white, and blue unspoken rule. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Tulsi Gabbard have all embraced colors that were different from the unspoken rule. The landscape of politics is changing nowadays: our candidates look different from before, and their campaigns are looking different too.
Elizabeth Warren utilized traditional dark blue, red, and white tones in addition to surprising mint green. Kamala Harris’s campaign branding was made of purple with blue hues, red, and a joyful yellow. Kirsten Gillibrand used stark black, white, and her “pussy hat” pink. Tulsi Gabbard presented the use of a gradient orange sun in her logo imagery. On the other hand, the men in the race for Democratic nominee including Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders (and many more) used mostly the usual stars, stripes, and red, white, and blue.
On the other hand, many Republican campaigns broadcast traditionalism: They’re three times as likely as Democrats to use red over any color. From the candidates that challenged President Trump for the Republican presidential bid, all three men utilized red, white, or blue within their branding. Joe Walsh introduced the most striking of the Republican logos, by using a strong black, white, and red combination alongside bold text. The Mark Sanford campaign exhibited the most traditional color combination and design, utilizing all red, white, and blue, along with a combination of stars within the logo and simple bolded text, while Bill Weld presented another combination of the traditional colors, using a dark and light blue, an orange hue red, and white.
Even after such presence of diversification, Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, provided a straightforward logo, with commonly used bold sans serif all caps typeface. Accompanying him in the national race with a familiar design logo was President Trump’s campaign, still exercising the branding from its 2016 campaign.
Are Colors Really That Important?
Voters might not necessarily realize it, but graphic design plays an important role in political campaigns, alerting us to how a candidate wishes to be perceived by the public. Color plays a role in our everyday lives as corporate brands utilize them to set themselves apart from competitors and also establish an identity and connection with their users and the public. Colors are one of the key elements to evoke contextual associations and reactions to come to your minds. Brands build on these associations to communicate values, personality, heritage, places of origin, and more — political candidates are now exercising a more specific branding.
A Long Way to Go
After years of traditionalism within campaign colors, is it necessary for candidates to display their patriotism through red, white, and blue? Patriotism should be implied when hopefuls are running for high offices within the nation. Supporting candidates to strip away from the red, white, and blue agenda would allow them to portray who they are honestly, and the public would grow a real relationship with their public servants.
The progression of design in campaigns has been quick, well-received, and celebrated by presidential hopefuls. But with the success of the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, as well as Donald Trumps’ re-election campaign, it sparks up a question: While new branding is trendy, do they win you a campaign?
And this is just the beginning—the political field is diversifying more and more. The fact that we are a multi-racial and multi-cultural society is one of the attributes that make America thrive, and design has an important role to play in facilitating the authentic communication of a candidate's personality, values, as well as their vision for the country.
Co-authored by Camelia Betancourt and Naeim Khanjani.
Camelia Betancourt is a Product Designer and Communications intern at Electo.
Naeim Khanjani is the co-founder of Electo, a civic tech mobile application that aims to help users become better informed voters by providing everything needed to make informed, conscious voting choices.
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