In case you missed it, Senator Elizabeth Warren is not our nation’s president. She didn’t even manage to secure the Democratic nomination. But there’s no questioning that her red, white, and green brand marked a new approach to presidential politics. And now that the 2020 race is sorted, as Democrats won the election, the team behind the Warren brand is sharing the methodology behind it for the first time.
It’s a brand that pulled from from civil rights, superheroes, and the Statue of Liberty herself.
While Warren lost, “it wasn’t because of the logo,” laughs Matt Ipcar, executive creative director at Blue State, the firm that created her brand. (Warren’s own campaign design team, led by Raquel Breternitz, was responsible for realizing campaign materials in day-to-day operations.) Ipcar worked on President Obama’s historic 2008 and 2012 campaigns. And on January 19, 2019, Ipcar’s team met with Warren on Zoom, just weeks before the campaign kicked off, to share the fresh new brand they’d created for her.As Ipcar explains, Warren’s existing branding before 2019, looked like that of a senator’s. It used a mix of dark blue/light blue, featuring her name in a big script. That approach didn’t feel presidential. And it didn’t necessarily capture the nuance of Warren’s personality, either. So the team needed to remake her brand to elevate Warren to a presidential figure.
“Your brief is different if you are creating a brand for a product than a person,” says Ipcar. “In the old days it would be cigarettes, or dish soaps—all of the products are the same, so you’re completely creating the brand. Whereas a person like Obama and Warren, they have a brand already—they might not have a logo, but they have a brand.”For Blue State, defining what made Warren’s messaging so powerful to begin with was key. They created a list of words including clarity, purpose, urgency, democracy, and openness, which captured the sharp tenor of Warren’s arguments.
From there, they dug into history, finding inspiration in mid-century social movements. Yoko Ono’s famous “War is Over!” made the shortlist mood board, as did the “I Am A Man” poster carried by Black Americans during the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike. They also loved the “Vote Straight Democratic” messaging used by FDR in the 1934 election.
What Blue State created was a striking presentation of Warren. The name is written in a mix of Hoefler&Co.’s modernist Ringside and Verlag typefaces using the tight, compressed permutation, which gives the name a sharp intensity on the page—though when you look closer, you’ll note that the letterform edges have been rounded off, providing the name an approachability. It’s underlined to enhance its punch, and serve as an homage to “I Am A Man.” Ipcar admits these historical references are lost on most people, but that’s okay because they still have intrinsic meaning, while the visual techniques themselves stand the test of time. Plus, he still views the study of historical social movements as something that galvanizes the design team itself to create focused work.
The answer to that question was found in the front yard of Joe Rospars’ home, founder and CEO of Blue State, who also served as Warren’s chief strategist.
“Some time after the Trump election and the Women’s March, on his stoop in Brooklyn, he erected a Statue of Liberty out of chicken wire and fairy lights. And if you went to his house, you’d say, ‘it’s the one with the weird Statue of Liberty on the stoop’,” says Ipcar. That image stuck in Ipcar’s head as he and Rospars were figuring out a third color. “We were talking about the Statue of Liberty, and those ideals. I said, ‘maybe this minty, dentist-office green…do you think it’d work?'”
“One reason I knew it would work is it’s the same brightness as the light blue we’d used for Obama,” says Ipcar. “It’s like a stand-in highlight color you can use in place of white from the flag. You can put dark text on it and have the contrast be enough to read.”
But would it be garish? Ipcar overcame this concern when he came across a pair of vintage Nikes that featured a minty green and a red swoosh. “I was like okay, if they did it, and it looked cool, it’ll definitely work here,” says Ipcar. “Then it’s a matter of opening Illustrator and Figma and testing exactly what works and doesn’t.”
The final posters were a mix of comic halftones, bold texts, and layered graphics. Warren’s “we will” mantra was scribed by her own hand. And if you look very closely, you’ll notice Warren’s important reference back to FDR: “Vote democratic” was printed on every rally sign during her campaign. That message points to the ultimate success of the Warren presidential bid. Even though she lost her own battle for the White House, the Democrats won the presidency, the House, and the Senate.
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