As candidates began to announce their candidacy for the 2020 presidential election, we thought to ourselves, “If Cory Booker runs, we want to design his campaign.” 

As Mayor of Newark, NJ and as U.S. Senator, he has a track record of championing the needs of the public and delivering real change. Early in 2019, we got the call. 

The challenge was to differentiate him from a wide field of candidates (and from Obama), to capture his singular voice, and to get people excited. In speaking with the candidate, he gave us four key words to describe the 2020 campaign: Love, Defiant, Black, and Young.

Moments of intense hope or defiance in American history have a similar vocabulary of the vernacular. Bold condensed letters. More text, less iconography. Lots of immediacy.

The system includes four distinct layouts structures: Stacked, Vertical, Kinetic, and Lyrical. These options enabled the campaign’s design team to support messaging while expressing a range of tones, from joyful to somber. 

Naming each layout provided an easy reference point while quickly churning out large amounts of materials on short turnaround times. These were used across everything from placards and rally signs to social graphics and t-shirts.

At the 2016 Democratic Convention, Senator Booker referenced “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou. In his emotional speech, he promised, “America, we will rise.” This became a rally cry for supporters. 

To reinforce the message, Champions worked with Jesse Ragan to create a specialized mark that referenced the shape of the iconic marquee at the Paramount Theater in Newark, representing the candidate’s relationship to New Jersey.