When it appeared on the web last week, the first graphic motifs of the Harris-Walz campaign generated rather limited enthusiasm. They were met with critical comments such as “boring,” “pointless,” and “lacking imagination.” In fact, the simple design of the logo, fully tailored to the new Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, sends a clear political signal. This will be presented more clearly at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which will take place from August 19 to 22 in Chicago, Illinois.
After Joe Biden exited the election race this July, the Biden for President campaign was urgently reformatted into the Harris for President campaign. The first media applications, created by Harris’ election team, visually follow the latest Democratic presidential campaigns. However, the Harris-Walz logo somewhat departs from the Biden-Harris design.
One factor influencing the new design is the fact that Tim Walz, the vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor, is currently described in U.S. media as a “Midwest dad” type. As a result, the Democratic team is changing its typography, abandoning the Decimal and Mercury fonts by Hoefler & Co., which were adopted after Joe Biden was announced as a presidential candidate and have, until now, been used for Harris. Instead, they have adopted Sans Plomb 98 by Lift Type, as well as Balto by Tal Leming. The former has been renamed to Fearless, while the latter is used for “Walz” in the logo and for headlines and body text on kamalaharris.com.
The name “Fearless” itself suggests a certain political message. The new design, mainly based on typography, features Harris’ signature. The clearly simple Harris-Walz logo is intended to convey that the duo has their own political style, set priorities, and act in their own distinctive way. In other words, simplicity here is not an expression of something unimaginative, but rather a political manifesto.
The fairly generic logotype is free of decorative elements that are so common in political campaigns, whether Republican or Democratic. Nor does it feature traditional American symbols like stars and stripes or a red, white, and blue color scheme. The main intention is that nothing should distract from the content.
Back in 2020, as part of her vice-presidential campaign, Kamala Harris chose typography characterized by narrow letters. At that time, the Washington, DC-based design agency Wide Eye, which was responsible for the White House logo under President Biden, developed a design based on the Fearless sans-serif typeface, showcased in the campaign’s slogan “Kamala Harris For The People.”
Narrow letterforms emphasize the vertical dimension, a perception strengthened by the all-caps lettering. Thus, the words in Fearless are perceived with more straightforwardness, conveying attitude, firmness, and determination — crucial values and messages that Harris is taking to the White House.
Both the Kamala Harris For the People design and her current presidential campaign visually relate to Shirley Chisholm, who was the first African-American woman elected to Congress in 1968 and ran as the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. Amid a harsh political climate, she fought for equity under the motto “Unbought and Unbossed,” expressing her commitment not to follow any instructions from above or cater to the goals of wealthy donors but rather to act based on her own principles and values.
Kamala Harris says that Chisholm has been and continues to be a great source of inspiration for her. “We stand on the shoulders of Shirley Chisholm, and Shirley Chisholm stood proud,” Harris once emphasized during her term as a senator from California. So it’s not accidental that the Harris-Walz team references the typography of the Chisholm campaign from the 1970s.
The design of the Harris-Walz campaign is predominantly rooted in American history and is different from many previous campaigns, including Barack Obama’s 2008 “Change” campaign (“Yes, we can!”), which featured the sans-serif Gotham typeface inspired by Futura. Developed by German type designer Paul Renner in 1927, Futura remains quite modern, unlike any other classical font. In a way, it has been a good example for creating many geometric fonts, like the Grotesk family, which have also been widely used in political contexts.
For example, the 2016 Clinton-Kaine campaign reintroduced a geometric font into the American political aesthetic, namely Sharp Sans by Sharp Type. Similar typefaces were featured in all three of Donald Trump’s campaigns — Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk and Monserrat in digital contexts. The Harris team, however, is taking a different approach.
The appearance is classical, proud, straightforward, fearless, and unadorned. While Obama’s “Change” slogan conveyed a desire for change that echoed, in some ways, Chisholm’s “Catalyst for Change” roundel, it is typography that plays the primary role in Harris’ campaign, subtly conveying the aspiration for reform through historical allusions.
