How the Democrats found a new brand at the DNC
How the Democrats found a new brand at the DNC
The visuals are from Biden. The inspiration was from the Obamas. But the energy is all new.
BY Mark Wilson
On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris was an exciting political contender. By Thursday night, ensconced in the liberal bubblewrap of Chicago’s United Center, she felt a lot like the next President. The transformation was a masterwork of not just political branding, but of branding in general. The Democratic Party found a way to harness the almost intangible momentum that turns a good candidate into a winning one.
The DNC has represented a best-case brand turnaround for the Democratic Party, accelerating an unexpected energy from Kamala Harris’ announcement to run for President into a feasible path to election.
But what now feels like a forgone conclusion was really the work of careful brand curation. The hard assets of logos and color palettes (which were built for Biden eight months ago), the carefully chaptered hand off of the torch from the old guard to new, the choreographed cameos, and the overtly planted theme of joy. All of these elements have coalesced into a Democratic Party that feels newly energized (if divided on certain issues)—like it has finally hit its stride after more than a decade of stumbling.
Setting the stage
DNC officials started setting the stage back in December 2023, when organizers enlisted Wide Eye (a firm that worked on Biden’s campaign and is behind Harris’ presidential branding) to create the website and the 60-page brand system for the 2024 DNC.
“When we did the identity, Joe Biden was the presumptive nominee,” says Wide Eye founder and creative director Ben Ostrower. “So the brief was, this is Joe Biden’s convention.”
As we’ve previously reported, the DNC brand lifted elements directly from Biden’s brand. That included the typeface Decimal, which was gently reworked in order to stack the letters “D N C” vertically rather than horizontally. That verticality wasn’t just meant to be surprising in a political world focused on increasingly wide, manspreading wordmarks. It was meant to celebrate the context of the Chicago skyline, the city that birthed the skyscraper. Powerful, vertical typography also served as a backdrop during many presentations, proclaiming “Choose Security” or “A Just Future” in Tungsten Condensed.
The logo also included the three wavy stripes of Biden’s American flag, which the team has dubbed “bacon.” The inclusion of the American flag was strategic in both cases, not just because we live in America, but because Wide Eye views the flag itself as something appropriated by Republicans. Ostrower wanted Democrats to own it as a “new patriotism.”
In terms of color, red, white, and blue were obvious defaults. Wide Eye had suggested expanding the palette, particularly with one concept that included orange. But that color progression was deemed a bit too jarring for the convention—an event that comes around once every four years and is anchored to a large extent in its tradition and familiarity.
“It’s tantamount to, like, designing the Oscars. It’s one of those things where it’s such a part of American life, it has to look like people expect it to look while also feeling current,” says Ostrower. “You can’t overbrand it. You can’t overdo it. You can’t be too showy . . . it has to look like it just exists.”
While playing with a range of blues and reds, Wide Eye did manage to bring one significant modernization to tradition: a new color they dub “blue, almost black.” (And indeed, to the naked eye, as it appeared on a screen behind Al Sharpton on night four, it reads as a true black.)
Black is a shorthand for sophistication, a go-to in high design circles and brand campaigns—the opposite of Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off on stage. But functionally, what this almost-black did was boost the contrast of everything inside the United Center, offering a way to maximize the drama and color saturation of every moment.
Reframing republicans from ‘weird’ to ‘ridiculous’
After the failed attempt on Trump’s life, the once-reality show president had a new wave of legitimacy. Trump never looked as presidential as he did in the moments after a bullet grazed his ear. In July, all hope seemed lost for Democrats who were unable to sidestep the inertia of Donald Trump and JD Vance.
That was, until Biden announced he was stepping out of the race and endorsed Harris. Harris quickly secured endorsements from every major force in the Democratic party. A long-infighting group of Democrats had suddenly united. And then, her VP pick volleyed the first blow at the opposition. Tim Walz breathed fresh air into Democrat’s positioning by calling Republicans “weird.” In fact, it had been a refrain of his for months that most of America heard for the first time only after he became Harris’ VP pick.
At the DNC, it would have been a reasonable move for Democrats to just push the winning term again and again, hammering it over our heads. But what they did instead was something more subtle. Democrats capitalized on the DNC to shift the framing of Republicans as “weird” to “ridiculous.” While they never went so far as to say the word, they didn’t need to.
We sensed the ridiculousness of team Trump in an incredible, earnest offensive from Michelle and Barack Obama on Tuesday that brought back an optimism few Democrats have felt since 2008. Michelle’s speech cemented themes we’d hear again and again. She leveraged ”love” and “neighbors” to remind us that ever present anger with half the population might be the wrong way to live.
Rather than package Trump as the ultimate evil (as he was in 2020), the Obamas often laughed away his power. They gave Darth Vader the Space Balls treatment.
Michelle dubbed Trump’s messaging “the same old con,” while quipping “who’s going to tell him that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” She may have burned members of her own party even harder, when she dismissed concerned liberals as being Goldilocks, tacitly reframing the protesters around the Gaza genocide as idealists who’d become too sanctimonious to vote for anyone, at the expense of everyone.
Barack packaged Trump as a child complaining on the ride down his golden escalator, before, in a once-unthinkable twist, he turned Trump’s obsession with crowd size into a dick joke. The next day, Walz would quip, “You got to give it to him, he’s a good actor,” as if he was giving Trump a little head pat before the former president ran back on the field of a peewee football game.
But one of the most subversive moves was the way Democrats reframed Project 2025 from being something legitimately scary to almost laughably evil. Mallory McMorrow, a state senator from Michigan, first walked out with the 900-page conservative manifesto on Monday, packaged in an obnoxiously oversized coffee table book. Like a perfect blog headline, she said, “They went ahead and wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do in the next four years. We read it.”
By Wednesday, when longtime SNL cast member Kenan Thompson walked on stage with the book, the absurd object accelerated to a full-out Carrot Top gag. Thompson, who has admitted much of his humor is born from his face (one that so often sits just on the verge of cracking up), flipped through the oversized manual “that could kill a small animal, and democracy,” while breaking the bad news to voters in one-on-one chats onstage: Uh oh, school teacher, the Department of Education is about to be eliminated!
“Just remember, everything that we just talked about is very real. It is in this book,” Thompson said to end the sketch. “You can stop it from ever happening by electing Kamala Harris as the president of the United States.”
By Thursday, Harris capped off the narrative shift toward ridiculousness when discussing how many conservatives under Trump want to mandate reporting on miscarriages and abortions. “Simply put, they are out of their minds,” she said.
Sparking joy
Back in 2008, Barack Obama offered Americans “hope.” It’s been a tough sensation to match since. “The Obamas completely screwed up branding for politics in a way; in the sense that they set a bar that’s just unreachable,” notes Ostrower. Vulture writer Nate Jones seized the week to remind us of the cultural consequences of that hope: Glee, Hamilton, and a wider trend he dubbed Obamacore.
But perhaps the most important job at the DNC has been giving Harris a distinct message of her own—and mirroring that through the entire production of the event. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, was the first to call her a “joyful warrior.” Someone who would be tough but bring an optimistic perspective to counter the doom and gloom narratives of Republicans. “Joy” was mentioned dozens of times by speakers on stage at the DNC.
There was no ticket more joyful in Chicago than the DNC this week. Light-up cowboy hats, cheeseheads, and blinking bracelets balanced the vibe of a political convention, sporting event, and concert. DJs even played in between speakers to keep spirits going.
The energy started when Harris, who, as a surprise, took the stage on Monday to wake up the United Center and pay homage to President Biden. It was followed by the roll call on Tuesday, which could have been a somber legislative affair to nominate Harris, but instead was a state-by-state musical celebration. With a playlist since uploaded to Spotify, the event became a party celebrating music often born from each state, punctuated by Lil’ Jon standing with Georgia rapping “Turn Out for What.”
Lil’ Jon was one of many unexpected cameos that poured in through the week, including Spike Lee (DNC convention officials claim even they didn’t know Lee was going to make an appearance), Oprah Winfrey, and Stephen Curry—even if the rumored grande finale with Beyoncé was really just a rumor.
The entire show was so successful that, as Harris finally took the stage on Thursday night, she addressed a dramatically different climate than she did on Monday. Trump, deflated into a shell of his presidential self, was easy fodder for Harris’ final blows.
“In many ways, Donald Trump is an un-serious man, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said.
Near the end of her speech, Harris turned back to the narrative of hope, and reclaimed the very idea of patriotism for the Democratic Party.
“It’s now our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish, and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on earth. The privilege and pride of being an American,” she said.
If the DNC demonstrated anything, it’s that it’s never too late for a rebrand. Now, Democrats just need to prove, with more than two months from the election and hot off a fresh liberal high, it wasn’t too early, either.
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