A new campaign poster for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz looks familiar. It’s not a duplication of a previous high-profile political campaign, and it doesn’t resemble what the branding of the Biden-Harris ticket looked like before the president announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. It’s a look you’ve seen more often outside of the political sphere: It resembles a concert poster.
The campaign poster would look right at home among the T-shirts and hats in a concert merchandise tent, adorned with photos of a cheering crowd and a list of upcoming tour dates. The photos have a grainy quality — a coveted look that many Instagrammers try to achieve with filters.
The look is intentional, Scott Starrett, founder of the design company Tandem, told Yahoo Entertainment. Starrett, who has worked on political campaigns before, co-created the materials for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first congressional campaign, in 2017, with designer Maria Arenas.
“I think there’s some buzz in the concert poster reference,” Starrett said, pointing to photos of the cheering crowd alongside Harris and Walz. “They really put the people front and center. The people are the most important part of this poster, the excitement of the people.”
Hunter Schwarz, a journalist who covers political design and art, wrote in his newsletter Yello in May that campaign logos and merchandising matter to voters, even the feeling the typeface evokes.
“Political design doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Schwarz told Yahoo Entertainment. “Design trends inside and outside of politics influence each other. Trends from pop culture repel each other.”
The concert poster parallel also ties into the pop culture inflections the campaign has embraced, with the internet calling Harris a “brat,” in reference to singer Charli XCX’s recent album, and Walz a “Midwest princess,” in reference to the title of Chappell Roan’s 2023 album. The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
“They’re definitely trying to maximize the stardom component,” Starrett explained. “There’s a certain feel to music venue posters. Part of that is utility and part of that is people repeating design patterns so people know what they’re getting into.”
Harris’s campaign had a very short lead time to create the look and feel of a campaign after President Biden dropped out of the 2024 White House race and endorsed his vice president. By using design patterns familiar to the general public, such as a concert poster, Starrett said, they make potential voters feel at ease.
Starrett compares it to former President Barack Obama’s “O” logo for his 2008 presidential campaign. The “O” logo could stand alone and voters knew who it referred to and what it meant.
“The Obama campaign really brought design into politics in a way that it hadn’t done before,” Starrett said. “So all of this is everybody standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Harris doesn’t have that advantage.
“The Harris campaign doesn’t have time to create a logo that looks like Obama’s campaign, or even Hillary’s ‘H,’ [from her 2016 campaign]”They are, out of necessity, [doing] form follows function. They use this urgency to use references.”
After a summer of major concert tours — including Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour,” Beyoncé’s “Renaissance World Tour” and the record-breaking crowd that attended Roan’s Lollapalooza set — Schwarz said it makes sense that music influences politics. He pointed to Kid Rock’s performance at the Republican National Convention as evidence that pop culture and politics are naturally intertwined for both parties.
While Harris’ campaign is still in its early stages, having launched on July 21, there’s also a nostalgic element to the poster design. Wide Eye Creative, the creative agency that designed the look for Harris’ first presidential campaign in 2020, has the case study it used to create her initial branding on its website . It’s clear how much of the inspiration behind her initial branding has informed her current branding.
Wide Eye Creative’s mood boards for Harris’s 2020 run feature famous artworks and architecture, as well as Muhammad Ali posters, all forms of culture and entertainment serving as inspiration.
There’s also a clear nod to the past, as Wide Eye sought to create a “throughline between Kamala Harris’ then-impending candidacy and Shirley Chisholm’s historic 1972 race as the first African-American female presidential candidate in U.S. history,” according to the website.
“Similar to the AOC posters, we’re thinking about what’s entertaining but also a little bit combative,” Starrett said. “How do you make a sweatshirt that someone actually wants to wear, that also communicates a value system and a value set?”
Meet the now-infamous Harris-Walz camo hat. Nearly 50,000 of the hats have been sold since Aug. 8, totaling more than $1.8 million since they went on sale online two days earlier, Teen Vogue reported. It’s not at all traditional politician merchandise — typically red, white and blue — and the design is similar to the merchandise Roan sells at her concerts.
The hats are a clear parallel and response to the Trump campaign’s red “Make America Great Again” hats, which have been around since July 2015. (The Trump campaign’s website also sells camouflage hats with the campaign slogan.)
“[The Harris campaign] “relies less on having this one image that represents the campaign,” Schwarz said. “It creates this contrast between a Democratic candidate who is doing something new from a design standpoint and a Republican candidate who has adapted this long-standing brand for a new campaign.”
