by ismail jadun

It looks like customizing typefaces for presidential campaigns is in vogue! For the 2016 race, Hillary Clinton has commissioned a custom typeface called Unity in a similar move to Obama’s 2012 campaign — he got H&F to make a custom Gotham typeface with serifs.

One of the goals of Hillary Clinton’s campaign is to make her more relatable to everyday Americans and it looks like that effort has even been extended to a new typeface.

Unity is based on Sharp Sans but with tweaks to a couple letters to make them a bit more friendlier. For Unity, the dots on the i & j have been turned in circles instead of blocks and the terminals on the r & t extended to make the letters more round-er.

But showing is better than telling so here are the upper case letters:

The blue characters on top is the “Unity” typeface.

and take a look at the lower case letters:

The darker characters on the bottom is the “Sharp Sans” typeface.

I like the improved letters and it does help make Hillary Clinton’s visual identity appear more approachable yet modern. And as I mentioned in my previous post, even the name of the typeface has an interesting history for her campaign.

The next big question is — will other candidates commission a personal typeface?

Edit: It looks like Hillary is using two different versions of Unity. The version used in most graphics use the older square “r” from Sharp Sans while her website uses the rounded version shown above.