The Biden “bacon” logo lives on at the DNC
Plus: This artist did a whole exhibition about Trump’s image and gave Trump a book about it
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
The Biden “bacon” logo lives on at the DNC
This artist did a whole exhibition about Trump’s image and gave Trump a book about it
Scroll to the end to see: the vintage Levi’s jeans that are getting a remake 👖
The Biden “bacon” logo lives on at the DNC
The logo for the 2024 Democratic National Convention was designed in anticipation of President Joe Biden being nominated again, but even with him out of the race, organizers decided to keep it. The DNC logo is built around the three wavy red lines that make up the E in Biden’s former campaign logo, and suggest a waving flag. Designers at Wide Eye, the creative agency that’s worked with both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, affectionately refer to the mark as “the bacon.”
Major party political-convention branding is typically designed independently of the nominee’s own campaign branding—and in fact, it usually has to be ready before the party picks its nominee. For Democrats expecting another run from Biden, the DNC 2024 logo was an exception to that recent historical precedent. Embedded inside the convention’s branding, “the bacon” conveyed party unity behind the sitting president. Now, it’s the central mark of an overarching convention brand that must blend elements from multiple Democratic presidential campaigns.
Fortunately for Democratic designers, the convention logo still works without Biden and fits into a larger Democratic-brand universe. Wide Eye founder and creative director Ben Ostrower told me that the intentionally simple Harris-Walz logo was designed following visual research that stretched back into the pre-Obama era, when campaign brand was more about type than logomarks.
That mindset is present in the Democratic National Convention branding, where instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to typography, different fonts are picked for different messages. Tungsten, the convention’s font for environmental graphics, according to its brand guide, lives alongside the Biden campaign’s font, Decimal, which lives alongside Fearless, the name the Harris campaign gave its version of the Sans Plomb font used in its logo.
There are no strict rules that every sign at this convention has to look the same or use the same font. On the convention’s first night, attendees held red, white, and blue “USA” signs that could have worked at the Olympics, and green signs that read “Jill” in tall, all-uppercase white letters for the first lady. For the president’s speech, there were both lollipop signs that spelled “I love Joe” vertically with a red heart for love, and red signs that said “Thank You Joe” in a white serif. Despite their different styles, they look visually coherent.
It’s a sharp contrast to the design of the Republican National Convention, where signs were designed using former President Donald Trump’s campaign logo template and all set in Gotham. Republicans nominated the same candidate for a third consecutive run while Democrats have a new candidate whose campaign is about one month old. That difference shows up in their graphics. Trump’s branding and logo is well-established, while Harris’ is new and brimming with possibilities.
This artist did a whole exhibition about Trump’s image and gave Trump a book about it
In 2019, artist Andres Serrano held up a pop-up exhibition at ARTX in New York City that looked back at decades of Trump iconography. Titled The Game: All Things Trump, the exhibition collected 1,000 Trump-branded or -signed items, from his many magazine covers and Donald J. Trump Signature Collection ties to signed campaign ephemera and Trump Halloween masks.
The artist, perhaps best known for his controversial piece “Piss Christ” (1987), told the New York Times, “I make art about very basic things: life, death, religion,” but “after a while it occurred to me, what’s the most important thing right now? Donald Trump.”
So Serrano built the collection for the exhibition by bidding on eBay, eventually spending nearly $200,000 for items including the 10-foot-tall “Ego” sign from the Trump Taj Mahal’s Ego Lounge. There’s the Milton Glaser-designed gold Trump Vodka bottles, a box of Trump Steaks, and copies of Trump: The Game, the board game that came out following the release of his ghostwritten memoir The Art of the Deal.
Together, it’s a portrait of a man through marketing and material culture, and a reminder of how Trump built his national profile from New York City tabloids to a once-and-potential-future president. For Trump, it’s something worth smiling about.
Trump’s now the proud owner of a signed copy of a book on the exhibition. A photo of him happily holding Serrano’s book was published by Artnet News earlier this month. The photo was taken at Mar-a-Lago by Isabelle Brourman, the sketch artist at the Trump trial, who gave Trump the book from the artist. It’s signed, “To President Donald Trump, Best wishes, Andres Serrano.”
Fame is central to Trump’s rise and more broadly, it’s a powerful tool in politics. Democrats belittling the size of Trump’s crowds at the DNC are suggesting a slip in his rally attendance numbers would signal a slip in popular support. Trump understands the power of celebrity, but speaking in entertainment terms, former President Barack Obama suggested during his DNC speech that Trump’s star is waning.
“We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse,” Obama said.
Have you seen this?
These famous Chicago landmarks will play host to the DNC. Democrats are taking over Chicago landmarks from the United Center to Wrigley Field—and yes, even Trump Tower Chicago. [Fast Company]
Trump returns to outdoor rallies, now surrounded by bulletproof glass. Surrounded by bulletproof glass and enhanced security measures, former President Donald Trump spoke Wednesday at an outdoor rally for the first time since the assassination attempt over five weeks ago in Butler, Pa. [CBS News]
Billionaires Timothy Mellon and Mike Bloomberg inject massive sums into 2024 super PACs. Wealthy businessman Timothy Mellon and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote huge, eight-figure checks in July to support major Republican and Democratic super PACs, respectively. [NBC News]
Levi's readies special made-in-Japan 1922 501XX jeans. The selvedge-denim silhouette is a “stitch-for-stitch” replica of a pair of archival Levi’s 501 jeans from 1922. [Hypebeast]
The Harris campaign’s Designers for Democracy collection brings top designers to political merch. Designers were asked to incorporate campaign themes and issues they felt passionately about into their pieces. [Yello]
History of political design
Walz for Governor branding (2022). Walz ran on the theme “One Minnesota,” and his dog Scout appeared in his merch.
A portion of this newsletter was first published in Fast Company.
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