There’s a small stack of Planned Parenthood T-shirts in Rebecca Davis’s closet, each one acquired at a volunteer event with the organization. Davis is a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and even became a member of its activist council last year, but those shirts are gathering dust.
“It’s not something I would ever wear, other than on the day I spend with Planned Parenthood,” Davis says. “It’s not that I don’t think they’re a great organization, it’s just that the logo is ugly.”
Does that sound superficial? Davis, an editor and the founder of an activist organization called Rally+Rise, knows that it might. But her feelings indicate a real missed opportunity, when a political organization’s core fans, the very people who should want to give it all the free advertising in the world, can’t bring themselves to wear its merch because it’s not cool. It’s a design problem, and one that some activists and candidates seeking office in this year’s midterm elections are trying to rectify.
Until late September, 64 Cooper Square in Manhattan was home to the activist bar Coup, which sprung up in the wake of President Trump’s election and, while it was open, donated all of its proceeds to organizations like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Coup’s wood bar, mirrored liquor shelves, and blue upholstered booths are still there, but the space is now the campaign headquarters of Suraj Patel, a 34-year-old Democrat running for congress in New York’s 12th district. The primary in late June will pit him against Sander Hicks and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a 72-year-old Democrat who has held that office since 2013.
A striking feature of Patel’s campaign, if you compare his website to his competitors’, is its uncanny resemblance to fashion and lifestyle startups like Glossier, Outdoor Voices, and Harry’s. It has clean design, a casual tone, and friendly sans serif type, all tied together with a familiar shade of blush pink — classic startup minimalism. That’s intentional. Patel, until recently an adjunct professor of business ethics at NYU, says that his campaign team is trying to emulate the success of brands like Casper, Harry’s, and Glossier, which used digital content and great design to build their communities of shoppers. Or in his case, voters.
The hipness continues in Patel’s campaign merch, which includes T-shirts and a workout tank with the words “Awake. Aware. Active.” printed in wavy type on the breast, a reference to the streetwear brand Anti Social Social Club’s logo. Another shirt reads “Care Hard” on the front and lists 12 of Patel’s core values on the back (“Healthcare is a right / Gender is a spectrum / Black lives matter”). A third, cheekier than its siblings, just says “Political campaign.”
“We’re riffing off Anti-Social Social Club and Virgil Abloh’s stuff, which if you get it, is a little wink and nod, but it’s not alienating to people who don’t get it,” says Anjelica Triola, the chief creative officer of Patel’s campaign and a former creative strategist for brands like Adidas, Target, and LVMH.
The people who don’t get it are probably older. Millennials don’t have the best track record of showing up to vote, especially in local and state elections, but President Trump’s election lit a fire under the butts of many young, newly furious liberals. Patel is pushing hard to get them to vote, and his district, which stretches from Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the Upper East and includes Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Astoria, is a hotbed of the sort of affluent millennials who are steeped in the visual language of brands like Outdoor Voices and Warby Parker.
“The type design is trendy, but there’s a freshness to it because it’s never been done in [the political] space,” says Brian Mackin, the graphic designer who created Patel’s branding and merch. “And the campaign is a finite period of time. We would approach it differently if it were an institution that has to last for 10 to 15 years, but with this, it’s like, ‘Let’s get the candy out.’”
Patel’s team is hosting yoga and spinning classes, putting out 30-second explainer videos on issues like gerrymandering, and making his campaign office open to the public. He’s trying to meet potential voters where they already hang out, in real life and online. In late March, his team is co-hosting a panel on fashion, consumption, and sustainable living with Celsious, a chic, sustainability-oriented Williamsburg laundromat that opened last year. In addition to winning a seat in the House, Patel hopes to create a literal playbook for digitally led campaigns that other progressive candidates can use, too.
Like many candidates, Patel wants to position himself as a break from the status quo, and a lot of those websites tend to be starchy, buttoned-up, and heavy on the stars and stripes. Pink and navy veers confidently away from a red, white, and blue scheme. Lindsay Brown, a 29-year-old running a “progressive campaign on the Republican ticket” in New Jersey’s 7th congressional district, opted for pink instead of red, too. She says she identifies with it as a woman and a millennial. She likes that it’s unconventional.
But as Mackin points out, pink, white, and blue is still a variation on the classic. Patel’s (and Brown’s, to a lesser degree) aesthetic looks trendy and minimalist, but it’s also straightforward and simple, digestible to a voter of any age.
Flippable, an organization aiming to help Democrats win state seats, redesigned its website last fall, and in one branding exercise, its staff brainstormed a list of brands that resonated with them. That conversation has continued beyond Flippable’s relaunch, says CEO Catherine Vaughan, with the team drawing inspiration from Patagonia’s anti-Trump website takeover came up and the graphics Everlane uses to break down its pricing.
“The thing we thought was interesting about Everlane was how they describe their supply chain and are transparent about costs. That could be interesting in a world where people really distrust the DNC and where that money goes,” says Vaughan.
“I think there’s so much to learn from these brands with meteoric rises that we feel really loyal to,” she says.
In her earlier work at nonprofits, Vaughan found that impact was not always what motivated people to donate and get involved. Often, it was something more emotional: a narrative that pulled at people’s heartstrings, a personal connection, and even good branding, which isn’t often a priority for organizations working on a shoestring budget.
Flippable’s new look is more “professional” than before, Vaughan says, with bright colors, easy navigation, and appealing little doodles and illustrations. It’s very startup-like in that way, though the team was careful to stay approachable.
“One design we considered was mint green, and it had this sort of saturated, modern aesthetic,” Vaughan says. “It felt very cool, kind of the same color palette as millennial pink, but I’m not sure that would have spoken to everyone.”
Rally+Rise is, as founder Rebecca Davis describes it, a “post-election baby.” Its mission is pretty straightforward: To demystify the political process, to make activism feel accessible to everyone, and to make New York as progressive as possible. Thanks to Davis’s background — “My job has been to run sites and create brand identities for everyone from Well+Good to Urban Outfitters” — packaging was part and parcel with getting Rally+Rise off the ground. She tapped Kristin Eddington, a former colleague at Nylon who now works as Bon Appetit’s design director, to create the organization’s visual identity, and a week later, Eddington had it ready to go.
Eddington spent time looking at the work of the Japanese graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo; you can see that influence in Rally+Rise’s dense primary colors and in its logo, a hand reaching skyward that resembles one on a Yokoo poster. That hand has been replicated on tote bags and T-shirts, which are not, it should be noted, available for sale.
“When I was trying to pull inspiration for Rally+Rise, I didn’t look at any political design,” says Eddington. “It never got my attention before.”
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