The surge of female candidates running for office this year is having an unintended side effect: They are sparking a revolution in the design of campaign yard signs and logos, introducing a new palette of colors and dramatic departures from tradition in what’s long been one of the most staid and cautious corners of politics.

Red, white and blue are giving way to green, purple and even turquoise. Campaign logos are featuring landscapes and birds. The typography on signs is changing, too — softer sans serif fonts are replacing more severe serif typefaces.


Much of it can be traced directly to a deluge of female candidates — many of them running for office for the first time — intent on putting personal stamps on their campaigns.

“I think that a precedent has been set that colors can be changed, that different iconography can be employed and you’re seeing these candidates, in particular, absolutely pushing that another step further,” said Ryan Durant, principal partner at the branding agency OVO, whose team spearheaded Sen. John McCain’s rebranding efforts after his 2008 presidential election loss.

One of the candidates who sought to make her campaign logo a personal expression is Montana Democrat Kathleen Williams. For her, the branding serves as a reminder of her late husband.

Kathleen Williams has memorialized her husband in the logo with a star over a Montana landscape.

“When he was in Iraq, he wrote me this card that he referred to me as his North Star,” said Williams, whose husband who had died of a heart attack two years earlier. “He had suggested six years ago or so, that I run for Congress and I had rejected that because he said that he wouldn't come with me. So I just dismissed it.”

Now, as she runs for her state’s at-large congressional district, Williams has memorialized her husband in the logo with a star over a Montana landscape — a modern design that also incorporates elements drawn from the iconic Barack Obama 2008 campaign logo.

Jill Schiller, who’s running in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, scrapped her original red, white and blue logo after winning the Democratic nomination in favor of an avocado green and navy blue design. The new design, she says, was fashioned out of a desire to show that a vote for her isn’t going to be “politics as usual.”

Jill Schiller said her logo was fashioned out of a desire to show that a vote for her wasn’t going to be “politics as usual.”

“We wanted something fresh to stand out and show the district that we are offering something new,” said Schiller. “I think that it was something that would really stand out from the usual sea of red, white and blue.”

New Mexico Democrat Deb Haaland, who would become the first Native American woman sent to Congress in November, explained that the turquoise in her signs and logo — which also features the Zia sun symbol — is an ode to her Indian name and the jewelry she wears. The color, she said, “is powerful.”

Deb Haaland said the turquoise in her signs and logo is an ode to her Indian name and the jewelry she wears.

Traditional patriotic and flag-themed designs remain a staple of campaign season — they aren’t going away anytime soon. But the strong impulse for change among the current crop of women candidates, and their intention to challenge the status quo, has led to explosion of colors and designs rarely associated with the political arena.

Veronica Escobar went so far as to use her favorite color, hot pink, on her campaign materials and logo.

Democrat Veronica Escobar, a former county judge running in an El Paso-based congressional district in Texas, went so far as to use her favorite color, hot pink, on her campaign materials and logo. She almost decided against the unorthodox choice amid concerns she wouldn’t be taken seriously.

“There is nobody who is going to be harder on themselves than women are and that’s definitely true for me,” said Escobar, who is likely to win the heavily Democratic seat in November. “I didn’t want to undercut the seriousness of the endeavor, but I also felt like I had to reflect who I am and embrace my femininity and view it for what it is, which is a very positive thing.”

Not every candidate can successfully pull off a nontraditional design, according to graphic designer Sol Sender. Sender, who helped create the now-iconic “O” logo used during Obama’s 2008 campaign, said that even Obama couldn’t afford to nix the traditional American colors due to anticipated attacks surrounding his place of birth.

It takes a certain level of confidence as a candidate to be able to deviate from what has already been done, said Sender.

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“There’s probably a bit of a subliminal question of how much do we feel like we need to fit in,” he said. “Even for women, is it a question of fitting in from a historically less-advantaged position and sort of striving to be part of mainstream power? Or is it coming from a place of really doubling down on ‘We’re different, we have a different perspective, we stand for something different than the mainstream?’”

One of the year’s most distinctive, break-the-mold campaign designs belongs to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the giant-killing New York progressive who recently pulled off the upset of the primary season by defeating veteran Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley.

Using purples and yellows and drawing inspiration from old United Farm Workers of America posters, Ocasio-Cortez’s logo and campaign signs are a dramatic departure from customary practice.

Scott Starrett, who oversaw the creation of Ocasio-Cortez’s posters — which embraced Spanish-inspired inverted exclamation marks to highlight her Puerto Rican heritage — said they could afford to take design risks as they reached for a “bold, revolutionary look” for the campaign.

The risk proved worth it, according to Starrett, who co-founded Tandem, a New York-based creative firm, as campaign staffers have told him the stylish posters were so in demand that they had to ask people to refrain from taking them off the streets for their own personal use.

“I think that homogeneity in politics has been fairly standard,” said Starrett. “I think that there is an inherent masculinity in a lot of political design.”