![[Matter Header Twitter.png]] **Stop Applying the New York City map to your Yosemite Campaign** [Innovationish by Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden](https://www.innovationish.com/) holds a metaphor worth sitting with: imagine you worked hard to take a vacation. You finally arrive, someone hands you a map, and says " We're glad you're here. We spent so much time on this, we made it just for you." The map is beautiful. The colors are clear, and look good with each other. The font is easy to read. The lines are easy to follow and make sense without much thought. The paper is soft in your hands, but doesn't tear easily when folded up in your pocket. You take it appreciatively; and then you realize... you just arrived in Yosemite National Park, and you're holding a map of New York City. Someone did spend a lot of time making that map. The routes are thoughtful, the design is clear. But it’s just not for where you are. **That’s political design as practiced by Republicans, mostly.** --- This election season take a walk around your neighborhood and notice the yard signs. Without googling, can you guess their party? If you live in a leafy suburb or upscale urban neighborhood with progressive Democrats on the ballot, we think the answer is "probably." Progressive campaigns are leaning into diagonal typography going upward, sans-serif fonts, a lot of Poppins, a lot of Gotham, and non-traditional color palettes that break from red, white, and blue. They want you to know that they "aren't like the rest" and "are going to take our country forward, in a progressive direction". ![[Progressive Logos.png]] Republican campaigns tend to go the other direction, literally and figuratively: stars, bold crimson red, serif or condensed white type on the sign; with right angles boxed lines. They're "saying" (intentionally or not, mostly not) they stand for tradition, solidity; not for change. ![[Republican Logos.png]] Neither approach is inherently wrong. Someone, at some point, made good design decisions to arrive at those conventions. Red, white, and blue are patriotic colors. They're unifying. Americans are generally patriotic. Elections are patriotic activity. Or at least they were, in say 1987. No one in America trusts [[Institutional weakening is more evident in politics with each passing year|institutions]] anymore. Politics is ugly; it's violent, acrimonious, and presents through millions upon millions in negative ads. No wonder design principles are moving in different directions. The diagonal upward type? That’s smart. It communicates motion, progress, forward movement. It works on a neurological level before a voter even reads the name on the sign. Someone used real design principles to get there. ##### But then everyone else saw that "map" and decided to copy it. Even if the original was made for AOC’s congressional campaign in Queens, campaigns in Indiana are now slapping the same visual language on their materials. It's a new code; "I'm not the same old kind of Democrat, the one who looks and sounds just like those smarmy, overly-patriotic, probably racist Republicans." And let's be honest... red, white, and blue doesn't fit the political architecture an AOC or a Mamdani are trying to construct. Graphic designers, the great memeticists that they are, are usually given a commission: "make a campaign logo for a progressive candidate." And so... they do; with existing infrastructure of what that means living in their heads. Yellows and purples and up slashes are probably useful in a Dem primary, if you need to signal to white progressives who have traditionally rallied to them. But they might not help in a general. In fact, they don't. These design say to swing voters: "I'm just like that corporate HR Lady who ran for president telling us all to put our pronouns on our emails, and of course taxpayers should pay for jailhouse transition surgeries for criminal immigrants." Not helpful. And on the right: are most Republican primary voters hoping for steady, staid, same old, tradition, institutional? They are not. If you're a Republican hoping to appeal to the new GOP coalition, your brand design is sending the wrong message. They want their perceived enemies to feel pain. Does the guy with the IBM logo from 1987 look like he's ready to bring some pain? ### That’s what happens when you copy the map instead of reading terrain. Spoiler alert: when your campaign looks like everyone else's, voters will not remember it. "I saw Matt Brown's billboard on I-75 and he looked nice... or was that William Jones?" Are you proud of your campaign logo because you applied the basic design principles, or are you proud because it looks like your favorite logo from last cycle? Or because it's what you think a political logo should look like? That's making a tough sell harder when everyone hates politics; and if you're an incumbent - probably hates you. ![[Design Principles.png]] ##### Core question for practitioners: is what's being said, said on purpose? Elections are not about design, per se. Nothing is about design, per se. Yet, every single thing that you interact with on a day-to-day basis is designed. Design communicates to an audience, intentionally or not. Every choice made, or not made, is saying something. Our take: don't waste any inch of real estate, any chance to expose yourself to the [[As attention spans shrink, content outlets and consumption expand.|limited attention spans]] of [[Voters don't read|voters]]. Make your logo distinctive, legible, and make it say something intentional. Rob Sand and his team in Iowa did it right, we think. ![[Rob Sand Logo.png|577]] The designer didn't look at other political logos, they looked at design principles and made something that conveyed a message without shouting a party affiliation. It's communicating clear ideas - unity. A good political logo shouldn't require the nameplate to be recognizable. That's hard to do well, and Sand achieves it. And it breaks down well - the Iowa handshake graphic works as a standalone, as a favicon on a browser tab, or on the side of a barn. Flat graphic design is a great place to find the distinction between [[Creative or Clever? A Definition of Creativity.|creative vs clever]]. It's not about finding the most innovative, coolest, most creative solution. It’s about intentionally using typography, hierarchy, contrast, color relationships to impart a feeling, to code a mental framework we want the viewer to assume. These principles are not left or right; of course. They’re just true. Voters may not know why they remember something. But remember, they do. Your campaign tracks every impression on CTV, Insta and X. How many millions of impressions has your logo made? Did you give it any thought at all?  The next time you see a campaign logo; ask yourself... is this the right map? Does it point somewhere? Or are you lost in a wilderness, looking for Penn Station?