The Biden-Harris logo is here
The Biden rebrand is complete. I have the latest on the campaign’s new logo with Kamala Harris. Also in this week’s issue:
Notes on campaign design: The 2020 Virtual March on Washington
George W. Bush’s new paintings make a statement
These face masks are a must for art lovers
Yours,
P.S. The next two weeks will be the Democratic and Republican National Conventions!
Keep your eyes on your inbox for special-edition newsletters, follow Yello onandfor updates, and share this week’s issue with a friend or colleague you think might appreciate Yello’s convention coverage:
The Biden-Harris logo is here
Former Vice President Joe Biden announced Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate Tuesday afternoon and his campaign unveiled a new logo that includes Harris’ name. Harris is only the fourth woman to be included in a major party presidential nominee’s campaign logo:
The new Biden logo uses the sans-serif typeface Decimal, unlike the previous logo Biden used during the primaries which was set in the sharper-edged sans serif Brother 1816. Decimal was released in 2019 by Hoefler & Co., the type foundry behind former President Obama’s campaign typeface Gotham. Decimal was inspired by vintage watch lettering and makes the new logo appear sturdier. Biden senior creative adviser Robyn Kanner told Yello in July the campaign decided to introduce it into its visual identity because it was “true as time.”
Kanner said the new logo was designed to retain the style of the original 2020 logo with strengthening its presence.
“There's no malarkey in this logo — it's clear and represents an America that is strong, bold, and unified,” Kanner said in an email statement. “Joe Biden knows that governing partners must work in lock-step, as he did with President Obama, and the visual alignment of Biden and Harris in the logo helps convey the powerful impact of a strong partnership and unified America. The new logo uses the red stripes from the original logo to maintain the roots of our campaigns's visual identity but uses our new Decimal typeface and Senator Harris' name to ultimately strengthen its presence what our campaign offers Americans: a historical presidential ticket that is ready to unify the country and win the battle for the soul of the nation.”
The designer behind Harris’ 2020 primary logo, Ben Ostrower, told Yello the updated logo is “a logical and elegant evolution of the brand.”
“Decimal is a gorgeous typeface and a perfect fit for the Biden campaign,” he said.
Biden’s general election logo rollout went smoother than President Trump’s did in 2016. After Mike Pence was announced as Trump’s running mate, the campaign introduced a logo that depicted a T inside a P and was considered suggestive and promptly pulled. It was replaced with a new logo that spelled both candidates’ last names out.
The Trump campaign’s short-lived 2016 T-P logo, my emoji review of it at the time, and the campaign’s revised logo.
How the Biden campaign copied design from its former rivals
Credit: joebiden.com
The Biden campaign rolled out a new website last Wednesday that borrows elements from the former vice president’s Democratic challengers’ sites, including:
Silent auto-play video of Biden at the top of the homepage, inspired by Elizabeth Warren’s site.
Full-screen navigation designed for mobile, inspired by Kamala Harris’ site.
A donation bar that shows the name, home state, and donation amount of recent donors, inspired by Mike Bloomberg’s site.
A feed of Biden’s most recent videos and other content, inspired by Pete Buttigieg’s site.
Visual padding on the margins of the site, inspired by Beto O’Rourke’s site.
Biden senior creative advisor Robyn Kanner said the similarities between Biden’s site and others was due in part to the campaign hiring so many staffers who worked for other candidates.
“I can’t tell you how many times someone joined [the campaign] and we would just ping them and just be like, ‘This is great, how’d you’ll do that?’” Kanner told the Washington Post.
The new site was designed in partnership with a division of Perkins School for the Blind so it would be accessible for users with sensory, cognitive, and mobility disabilities, the campaign told Yello in a statement. The site has also been translated entirely into Spanish.
Subscribe to Yello for the latest news on the culture, branding, and visual rhetoric of politics, delivered each week:
Notes on campaign design: The 2020 Virtual March on Washington
Credit: @wideeyeco/Instagram
The 57th anniversary of the March on Washington is going virtual this year and the visual identity for the event was designed by Wide Eye. The typeface used in the identity is Bayard, a sans serif from the foundry Vocal Type that’s inspired by signs from the 1963 March and named after Bayard Rustin, a civil rights leader, advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and March on Washington organizer. Wide Eye said on Instagram that for graphics they paired historical and modern photos together for collages to connect the past to the future.
Credit: the 2020 Virtual March on Washington
The event will take place August 27 and 28, setting up some counter programming for the final day of the Republican National Convention on Thursday the 27. The virtual march is being organized by the NAACP and other partners, and will include an event at the Lincoln Memorial with Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III that will be streamed on social media.
Oprah turned her Breonna magazine cover into a billboard campaign
Credit: Oprah magazine
Oprah is drawing attention to the killing of Breonna Taylor with 26 billboards in Taylor’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, demanding for the arrest of the officers involved in her death. They feature a portrait of Taylor created by a 24-year-old self-trained artist named Alexis Franklin. Oprah said the billboards were how she was protesting.
“If not for the coronavirus, I’d be out in these streets marching with the Black Lives Matter protesters,” Oprah said in a video. “These 26 billboards, one for every year of Breonna’s life, are my offering, my form of protest.”
The Breonna portrait was on the September cover of Oprah magazine, the first time in the magazine’s history Oprah was not on the cover. Franklin, the artist, said she based the portrait on a selfie Taylor took, because “there was a sparkle in Breonna’s eyes.”
George W. Bush’s new paintings make a statement
Credit: George W. Bush Presidential Center
Former President Bush said he’s spent the past year and half working on his next big project: a book of portraits he painted of 43 immigrants titled Out of Many, One. The book will come out March 2, 2021 and it will be accompanied by an exhibition at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas through January 2022.
“At its core, immigration is a sign of a confident and successful nation,” Bush said in a statement. “We must always be proud to welcome people as fellow Americans.”
While Bush has stayed quiet about President Trump publicly, this project seems to speak volumes, at least when it comes to their differing attitude on immigration. Bush is reportedly not planning on supporting Trump’s reelection.
This will be Bush’s second book of oil paintings, following 2017’s Portraits of Courage, which showcased portraits and stories of U.S. veterans who served since the 9/11 attacks.
These face masks are a must for art lovers
Credit: MOCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is out with a limited-edition mask series designed by artists including Yoko Ono, Alex Israel, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts. The masks are handmade by L.A. fashion brand Citizens of Humanity, and they’re some of the dopest masks I’ve seen all pandemic.
Masks by Virgil Abloh and Barbara Kruger. Credit: MOCA
My favorites are Virgil Abloh’s “Still Speaks Loudly” mask and Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (Better Safe Than Sorry)” mask. The masks retail for $28 a piece, or you can get all nine plus a bonus MOCA mask for $280.
Everything you need to know about the new fonts on Instagram
I wrote about the new Instagram fonts for Yello membership subscribers. The most important thing to know is that cartoony font everyone says is Comic Sans isn’t actually Comic Sans. For iPhone users, it’s an Apple font called Chalkboard. You can read the full story or upgrade your account to read it and other exclusive stories here.
This issue has been updated with a statement from Biden senior creative advisor Robyn Kanner and with an image of the old and new Biden logos alongside each other.