A branding expert’s look at Harris/Walz’s campaign typography
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Issue #142: leaving it all on the mat, telling our coworkers how we really feel, and solving problems no one asked you to solve
By Harris Sockel
When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020, she mentioned in an interview that one of her inspirations was Shirley Chisholm — the first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress and the first woman to run for the democratic presidential nomination.
That’s not exactly how Chisholm wanted to be remembered. Here’s one of my favorite quotes, from an interview Chisholm gave decades after losing the nomination to George McGovern: “I want history to remember me… not as the first Black woman to have made a bid for the presidency… but as a Black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to be herself.”
Harris was so inspired by Chisholm that she designed her campaign as a visual homage. Advertising exec Marcus Wesson recently turned to Medium to unpack the design parallels. Here’s a side-by-side comparison:
D.C.-based creative agency Wide Eye used Chisholm’s color, type, and layout choices as inspo for Harris’ 2020 brand:
The same design firm branded the Biden-Harris White House, Biden’s campaign, and the Harris/Walz campaign logo (which underwent a few subtle design tweaks last weekend).
You can tell a lot about a design by what it doesn’t contain. There are no metaphors in the Harris/Walz logo — no arrows, flags, fire symbols, eagles, stars, or exclamation points (RIP Jeb!). Instead, there’s just Bureau Grot Condensed Bold type (or a similar custom typeface) on a solid background. It’s a decidedly straightforward, no-nonsense design. The Trump campaign’s logo is pretty straightforward, too, but it has a star border.
“Grot” is short for “grotesque,” a genre of typefaces first used in 19th century British advertising because they were blunt, unadorned, unpretentious sans serifs (and a little awkward-looking at the time, when most typefaces were elegant serifs, hence “grotesque”). The vibe sort of seems aligned with the Dems’ campaign messaging this go-round: We are plainspoken and normal.
What else we’re reading
- Former pro-wrestler Jesse Jantzen, who made it to the 2008 Olympic trials before losing to a wrestler he’d beaten in the past, reflects on how painful it can be to walk away from a sport you’ve poured your life into: “When people retire from our sport, they leave their wrestling shoes in the center of the mat, to symbolize leaving everything they had athletically in the arena, walking away satisfied.”
- From the archive: Chief People Officer (Credit Karma, Vevo) and adviser to the writers of HBO’s Silicon Valley Colleen Wheeler McCreary explains why she’s ripped out performance reviews for over a decade. They process-ize something we should all be living and breathing every day: telling our coworkers how we honestly feel about their work.
Your daily dose of practical wisdom: on initiative
Quiz: Zoom In
Below is a zoomed-in version of an image related to one of the stories linked above. If you know what it is, email us: tips@medium.com. First to guess correctly will win a free Medium membership.
And the winner of yesterday’s quiz is…cue the drumline… Jim the AI Whisperer who correctly answered: “It’s the album cover from Calimossa’s Club 555,” one of Barack Obama’s favorite tracks of 2024.
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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